Demonetisation Great Step For Indian E-Commerce Market: Facebook

Bengaluru: The government's demonetisation drive is a great step forward towards removing many bottleneck operations including cash-on-delivery in the Indian e-commerce market, Facebook managing director (India) Umang Bedi said on Thursday.

"The demonetisation move is a great step forward towards removing many bottleneck operations including cash-on-delivery operations in Indian e-commerce market," Mr Bedi said while delivering a speech on 'Digital Disruption Is Just The Beginning' at Global Mobile Internet Conference 2016 here.

"As an outcome from a short-term perspective, there is a shortage of cash in the market where people are queueing up... to get new currency in, and get more transparent and compliant with the law. So, there is a chance of retailing and e-commerce is slowing down a little bit, but I think it is very short-term glitch, but the upside of that is really good," he said.

Demonetisation is a right move as it would, in the long run, drive towards good governance and commerce in large proportions, among many other things, he added.

"Is this (demonetisation) right move? Absolutely. Personally in my opinion, I think in the long run it is going to drive digital adoption; drive demand; drive transparency; drive good governance, and drive commerce in a far larger fashion," Mr Bedi said.

He further said Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba does a sale of $20 billion in a single day compared to just $4 billion done by Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon.

"Alibaba does a sale of 20 billion dollars in a single day and the whole of India, when we do our Diwali and big bang (discounts) is 4 billion (dollars) at the most," he explained.

"And add up all the big boys together and the difference really is that the last mile - when 60 per cent of all transactions are cash on delivery. There is that bottleneck operation," Mr Bedi added.