Fashion Ecommerce To Cross Rs 2 Lakh Cr By 2020, Every 3rd Google Search Query Is Fashion Related

At an event in New Delhi, Nitin Bawankule, Google India Director for Ecommerce and Online has made a startling revelation: Indian fashion market is all set to cross Rs 2 lakh crore mark by the time 2020 ends.

He said, “By 2020, India is expected to generate $100 billion online retail revenue out of which $35 billion will be through fashion e-commerce. Online apparel sales are set to grow four times in coming years”

He further added that as per data from Google, every third search query on their platform is related with Fashion and Accessories, and such queries are increasing at a rate of 65% every year.

Yesterday we had reported that overall Indian ecommerce market will cross Rs 1 lakh crore mark in 2015 from Rs 81525 crore worth of online shopping which happened in 2014. If we analyze it vertical wise, then travel industry is the #1 niche with 61% share. Clothes and footwear constituted Rs 4699 crore or 5.7% of the overall ecommerce market.

As per Nitin, fashion sales on the Internet will grow to 35% by 2020 from the current market share. His statement must be evaluated from the point of view of Google, which captures 70% market share in search. Besides Google advertisement and paid ads on Adwords platform, Indian ecommerce portals are heavily investing in TV ads, newspapers ads and other offline medium.

Nitin also said that 50 crore Indians would be online in 2020, out of which 28 crore would be accessing Internet from their smartphones. Out of 500 million, Google estimates that 250 million would be shopping online. Right now, around 38-40 million Internet users have ever shopped online.

Consolidation Stage in Online Fashion Niche?

Last year in May, when Flipkart acquired Myntra, which was the leading fashion portal, for approximately Rs 2000 crore, then the consolidation stage was initiated automatically. Earlier, Myntra had acquired other fashion portals such as Sher Singh, which ultimately merged into Flipkart.

Before the acquisition, Mytra has adapted a marketplace based model, which further proves that there is a huge market for fashion and apparel niche.

Sensing the opportunities in this segment, Amazon India has already launched their dedicated fashion category on their website and have partnered with Future Group which owns private labels such as Lee Cooper, Converse, Indigo Nation, Scullers, Jealous 21.

Some insiders have even claimed that in near future, Amazon may acquire Jabong, which is right now at #2 position when it comes to online fashion sales.

Snapdeal, which is trying to become the Indian Alibaba is also observing this market closely, as they have already acquired fashion portal Exclusively earlier this year.

The validation by Google regarding the online fashion market in India is certainly a promising sign of it’s maturity and spread. Just for information, fashion and accessories retail (organized and unorganized) market is Rs 2.58 lakh crore in India right now (excluding jewelry); and online businesses in this niche have barely scratched the surface!