With the world facing its biggest fight from the global pandemic inflicted by the COVID-19, E-Commerce acted as a catalyst for many small level businesses in India. It played a major role in advancement of different businesses which were closed due to nation wide lockdown imposed for nearly a month by the Government of India. With the boost in Information Technology, the traditional method of business encountered many changes around the world. E-Commerce has changed the idea of business. 

Today in India we have almost 121 crores of unique mobile users out of which 49 crore people have an internet connection on their phones. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India these numbers of internet users are going to reach 82 crores by 2021. Average mobile internet penetration growth of the world is 19% and that of India is 90%. So as the number of internet users are increasing, the influence of E-Commerce is increasing. 

Today India is the third largest economy in the E-Commerce sector and will easily surpass the USA which holds the second position in the global market within a few years. E-Commerce business is a very good platform for rapid expansion of small businesses. The biggest advantage of E-Commerce business is that it increases the sales by a great margin without increasing the cost of the seller. 

To reach a huge number of customers in traditional business one has to open a chain of shops at different places and invest a huge amount of capital. But small businessmen do not have such a huge capital to invest so if he wants to expand his profits, E-Commerce is the best possible way as it automates everything. The businessman saves all his man power cost, accountant cost, store rent, electricity bill and a hell lot of expenditure that he had to do to expand his traditional business. 

As we all know each coin has two faces similarly E-Commerce business also has its own set of advantages and disadvantages which a businessman must consider when starting an online business. 

In E-commerce the online presence of a businessman helps him engage with people in a better manner as he is able to deliver ‘the right message to the right person at the right time’ which helps him build trust with the customer which later leads to a transaction. Windfall gain of a new customer happens when one takes his/her business online because in traditional shops only those people will buy the goods, who know you or live near you but in E-Commerce the whole world is your market. 

The biggest advantage of the E-Commerce business is Data driven Selling. There are no perception based offerings to the customers, on the contrary it is data driven as we can study the buying habits of our customer and then predict the right product that the customer needs. Whereas to keep this record in an offline store is next to impossible so the small businessman by taking his/her business online opens a great door of opportunity for growing their business in an exponential manner. Using this businessman can easily resell the products to the same customer multiple times which is not possible in traditional marketing. Like the famous quote ‘WHO MASTERS DATA WILL RULE THE WORLD’. Sales skyrocket with the help of this data driven sales.

Digital Branding is Fast and Cost Efficient as the traditional methods of advertising through TV Advertisement, Radio AD and Traditional Print ADs are very expensive as well as very slow and therefore low results. Whereas Digital Marketing is very fast and cost efficient yielding high results. 

Digital Sales Pitching is another big advantage for the business owners as they do not need man power to explain about their product, on addition to that the chances of human error are always there which may lead to delivery of wrong information to the costumer, whereas in digital sales pitching one can provide all the information about the products without any chances of error. 

Remarketing and Retargeting the same customer is also made possible with the help of E-Commerce as we can easily locate the customer using the internet and display our products to them using different features provided by Google and other platforms to us. Also 24×7 real income is possible now because of E-Commerce whereas it is very difficult to open your shop all the time. No matter how hardworking a person is, physical time boundation always exist. As everything is automated we don’t need to manage, advertise and take care of accountancy as well. Customers also have the freedom to shop anything anytime without considering the time zones of different countries, E-Commerce has made business so smooth, easy to run and requires a very less amount of capital that even a newcomer in this market can grow his business in a very easy way. 

E-Commerce has made business highly scalable as one can find clients abroad as well. There is no limit of market size and it has also put the monopoly of a few businesses on stake. Ecommerce has made the business international, scalable and highly profitable. Not only the businessman E-Commerce has also helped the employees as they can work from home. And it is definitely a boon for customers as fast order processing can be done in spite of huge market size compared to traditional shops where the customers had to wait in lines for their turns to come. 

As I mentioned each coin has two faces E-Commerce also has a few disadvantages for the small businessman. Customers usually want to try before they buy which is only possible in a physical store, they can be impatient if there is limited information available to them online, if the queries are not responded immediately then the willingness of the customer to buy the product decreases. Shipping delays are very frustrating for the customers, there are few needs of the people that are to be fulfilled immediately so in such cases people have only option left that is to buy from a shop. Nowadays E-Commerce is on a boom which leads to increase in competition for the small businessman which leads to decrease in profits. Also businessmen have to pay a fee to the E-Commerce websites to sell the products on their platform. There is limited control over the business as E-Commerce websites decide which product to display first. The biggest disadvantage of E-Commerce is that the ‘Customer is not yours, they are theirs and ultimately these customers are not loyal towards the seller but their online platform’. 

At the end I would like to say that the small businesses do not have a wide range of customers to earn profit, so E-Commerce showed them a path to showcase their talent; like the business of Khadi Handloom which has now been given the status of national importance by the current Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi. The emergence in E-Commerce has helped these Indian weavers to earn their livelihood. Not only the weavers but people from all sectors have benefited from E-Commerce and grown their business. So for small businesses it is a seed of opportunities, if nurtured properly it will definitely yield great results.

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