Continue to be bullish on Indian e-commerce market: Snapdeal CEO

Speaking at the 25th Wharton India Economic Forum, Bahl said India has seen massive growth in internet user base with addition of over 500 million internet users in the last four years.

Snapdeal. (Reuters)

Snapdeal continues to be bullish on the e-commerce market in India and is focussed on providing customers outside of metros access to great quality products at affordable prices, its co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl said on Friday.

Speaking at the 25th Wharton India Economic Forum, Bahl said India has seen massive growth in internet user base with addition of over 500 million internet users in the last four years.

"Many or most of them are still not e-commerce buyers but a vast majority of them are going to be e-commerce buyers. They mostly come from small towns...belong to low, middle to low income demographics and they have a lot of aspirations. They also have a lot of awareness thanks to social media about various options," Bahl said.

Snapdeal's platform is essentially building an experience which is tuned to their needs and is tailored specifically for their requirements to provide products within affordable price points but of great quality, he added.

"It's been a volatile year (2020) everywhere in the world and in India with the lockdowns and supply chain issues, etc. But in the medium to long term, we still continue to be extremely bullish about the e-commerce market.

"We feel that in the medium to long term, there will be a significant behaviour change and that will lead to significant acceleration in e-commerce," he said.

Bahl noted that there has been an acceleration in adoption of e-commerce in smaller towns as the selection of products available is often limited in offline retail.

"Those audiences are taking to e-commerce faster....We're also seeing a large cohort of new sellers who are coming online from smaller towns...

"So we've seen fairly significant tectonic plate shifts happen this year. However, the effect of those will completely be visible maybe a year or two down the road," he added.