Well, to say that e-commerce has taken over every single aspect of our livelihood in the last few years would be an understatement. Starting from shopping for apparel, accessories, cosmetics, gift items, consumer electronics to home decor, groceries, medicine, food, etc, everything has shifted online. All of the above-mentioned items, along with a million more, are delivered to your doorstep today with a few clicks on you computer. It should not be a surprise that with a customer base of billions of people, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is the richest man on the planet. The latest trend in the business leads us to D2C (Direct to Customer) market. While traditionally, the companies have always had a barrier between them and the customers through the middlemen (retailers), the D2C approach has become the new norm in the industry.
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D2C Business Benefits For Customers
India is a country with over 650 million active internet users. Also, a large chunk of this figure represents the young population of the country. With Jio Telecommunications services, a vast majority of the population has got access to high-speed internet. Therefore, the companies who want to sell their products have a direct connection with the potential customers. This eliminates the need for a middleman. Through social media platforms, affiliate marketing, online marketing, the companies are directly monitoring the demands of the customers and producing products accordingly. In addition to that, these companies save a ton of money that would otherwise have gone to the retailers. This enables the products to cost less, which in essence, benefits the customers. It’s a win-win situation for everyone, except the retailers.
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The customers get a kind of variety with each product which is simply impossible to experience in a traditional retail store. The customers have the access to the entire range of products available in any part of the country. Especially during the lockdown, when people were not allowed to step out of their homes, purchasing online was the only way left. With reference to the companies, they are able to attract more buyers because they can afford to offer discounts on products due to the large volumes sold. It could be easily inferred that the D2C market model has not only been a boon to the customers but also to the companies themselves, which is the reason why there has been so much growth in the sector, especially after the pandemic. No wonder, the conservative estimates of the worth of D2C market in India by 2025 is over $100 billion.
Consequences of Covid ON D2C Market
We understand that it is not justified and easy to take out positives from this horrendous pandemic, the effects of which everyone is suffering. But as humans, we have to see the silver lining, learn and move on from this precarious scenario. In the spirit of that mindset, there have been quite a few changes in the way we conduct our lives, businesses, education, and everything else. These will shape our future significantly. One of these changes is the way we buy new products or services. Technology has allowed us to have everything we need right at our doorstep and the lockdown has ensured that it deepens into our lifestyle going forward too. The demand for consumer electronics, fashion items, apparel, cosmetics, services has gone up astronomically. As a result, the companies had an opportunity to showcase their products and services through online marketing and sell directly to the consumers. This was made possible through giant e-commerce firms and company websites. Necessity is the mother of invention, is what they say. In this case, this could not have been more perfect. Remaining indoors was a necessity and e-commerce came to the rescue as the perfect solution to fix everyone’s problems. The kind of growth in this period that e-commerce has witnessed is simply unprecedented. Now that people have gotten used to this type of business, this trend has only one direction to travel. According to some experts, the D2C market is the new way of doing business and the worth of this sector might even cross $100 billion by 2025 in India alone. This does not seem to be an overestimation, at any rate, considering the rising middle-class population and internet facilities in the country.
D2C Market’s Negative Impact on economy
It is hard to falter this trend and easy to get overwhelmed by the positives but there is one section of the market that has been on the wrong side of things. The retailers in the country which had setup up small stores have faced the worse side of e-commerce. This has been the argument for a long time that the e-commerce giants suck up the small business owners putting them at the risk of losing their all. We can’t just ignore the fact that e-commerce has challenged the livelihood of a whole lot of people in India. Small business owners, who don’t have enough resources or knowledge to shift their operations online have crumbled under the bulldozer of digitalization in the consumer products sector. There seems to be one and only one way of reviving them. The big companies could include them in the process of acquiring products or they themselves could think of going online to keep their businesses running with a modern touch.
We hope that this article gives you an insight into the D2C market which is the future, not only in India but also globally. If there are any investors reading this, then you can consider this a potential investment opportunity in a field which is future-proof. Similarly, if there are new entrepreneurs here, you know where to market, advertise and sell your products to ensure getting the maximum eyeballs.
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