Electronic Commerce in India: The Untapped Potential

This paper discusses the potential of electronic commerce by reviewing the state of the Internet infrastructure, the skill base, and the potential application areas from which Indian organisations can benefit. It identifies the enabling factors as well as the bottlenecks and projects the future growth of electronic commerce in India. Introduction Introduction Introduction Introduction Introduction Availability of graphic browsers has lead to a snow balling popularity of the web, both as an interface to all resources on the Internet and as an advertising medium. This growth has a special significance for companies from India who find international advertising in traditional print media totally unaffordable. What is interesting is that even small companies which have something to offer to the international market can now use the web as their bill board and reach an international audience of over 80 million. For the large pool of manpower trained in IT, the Internet offers the opportunity of building enterprises to provide value added services.