Enable E-commerce to Disable Covid-19: Everything You Need to Know About Ecommerce Today
By: Aman Agrawal
Tags: Coronavirus, Marketplaces, Software Development, E Commerce Business, Business

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted and impacted the daily lives of citizens in an unprecedented manner. Governments continue to endeavour hard for protecting lives by imposing lockdowns, testing, segregation, and treatment. At the same time also restricting outdoor movement except for supplying and procuring essential goods and services. The role of e-commerce in both wholesale and retail trade is something worth taking a closer look at.

Providing door to door delivery of groceries, medicines and other essential commodities to consumers, while upholding the rules of social distancing is coming to the fore. It is effectively complementing local Kirana stores in ensuring the availability of essential supplies for consumers. However, the sector is plagued with various challenges, traditional as well as new, which must be overcome in order to unlock the true potential of e-commerce during the pandemic and beyond.

The contagiousness of Covid-19, and its unrelenting increasing spread, has prompted people to explore online purchasing options for essential products and services, from the safety of their homes. Given that it supports the implementation of social distancing measures due to the limited amount of physical contact involved in availing the same. Industry experts have termed e-commerce as the lifeline for cities under lockdown to fight against the pandemic.

E-commerce is also known to be providing many benefits for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), by providing them access to wider markets, overcoming geographic boundaries, providing a level playing field for competing with larger players etc. Consumers also gain through a wider choice of goods/services, competitive pricing etc. One of the most noteworthy benefits of e-commerce for MSMEs and consumers alike during the pandemic has been matching the demand and supply of essential products such as medicines, hand sanitizers and face masks.

Apart from the ‘safe shopping’ experience and access to essential products provided by it during the spread of Covid-19; e-commerce is also known to be benefiting or has potential to benefit farmers, by enabling them to bypass intermediaries and middlemen, and sell their (perishable) produce directly to wholesale buyers such as corporate grocery stores, restaurants, agri-businesses etc. This provides benefits of enhanced income for farmers, along with reducing wastage and enabling financial inclusion.

Various modes of enabling agricultural e-commerce are visible today, such as established e-commerce majors expanding into the grocery segment, or brick and mortar grocery stores opening online channels, or exclusive agricultural e-commerce businesses, or even e-commerce platforms tying with local Kirana stores for last-mile deliveries. Notably, some of such e-commerce service providers are changing their business model during the lockdown, and are connecting farmers with end consumers, in the absence/reduction of traditional wholesale buyers as mentioned above.

Recognising such benefits, especially in these times, the Ministry of Consumers Affairs of India had advised state governments and local administration to exempt e-commerce operations and its stakeholders, from any lockdown prohibitions. Given the benefits as mentioned above, it is also important to note the many challenges faced by different stakeholders of e-commerce, during the pandemic.

What Is Ecommerce?

Ecommerce, also known as electronic commerce, is a business model which involves transactions taking place on the internet. Stores that sell their products online are eCommerce stores or businesses. For example, Amazon.com is one of the most popular online stores in the eCommerce industry.

History of Ecommerce

The foundation for eCommerce was created in 1979 by Michael Aldrich. He connected his television to a computer using his telephone line. While it was unlike eCommerce as we know it today, his idea sparked the idea of shopping without visiting a physical store. At the time, most people didn’t own computers. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs popularized computers for the average person. Bill Gates even said that his goal was to put “a computer on every desk and in every home.” Without computers, eCommerce would be remarkably different.

In 1994, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon as an online store selling over one million different books at launch. Amazon would eventually go on to become the most popular online store for consumers to buy any type of products.

By the mid-1990s and early 2000s, people were adding computers to their home and paving the way for the growth of eCommerce. Companies were accepting checks in the early to mid-1990s as there wasn’t an online payment gateway to transfer funds from customers to businesses. When PayPal was founded in December 1998, it simplified the shopping experience for customers as credit cards were easily accepted.

By 2008, eCommerce sales made up 3.4% of all sales which shows industry growth. In 2014, it was estimated that there were around 12–24 million online stores worldwide.

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