The rapid adoption of smartphones has propelled m-commerce to take away some of the sheen from the e-commerce websites. However, the ecosystem needs to keep pace with this shift.
At the recently held Techcircle E-commerce Forum 2015 in Mumbai, eminent panelists deliberated on how m-commerce would lead the next wave in digital commerce and discussed the hurdles on the way.
The panel was moderated by Pradeep Tagare, investment director, Intel Capital.
Mausam Bhatt (senior director, marketing-mobile and digital, Flipkart), Kunal Shah (founder, FreeCharge.in) and Aloke Bajpai (CEO and co-founder, Ixigo.com) were the panelists.
The observations made by the panelists can be summarised as below:
Aloke Bajpai, CEO and co-founder, Ixigo.com: We are at a very interesting point in India’s journey towards mobile adoption. In the next 18 months, we we would add as many mobile users as we did in the last three and half years. Given the rapid pace of expansion, we should not be talking about ‘mobile first’ but ‘mobile only’ should be mantra in all forums.
Mausam Bhatt, senior director, marketing (mobile and digital) Flipkart.com: With regards to one time password (OTP), lot of companies are willing to take the risk of fraud or failure. Companies would factor such risks in their business plan and put aside some capital for such eventualities. A little forward thinking on the OTP side would go a long way.
Kunal Shah, founder, FreeCharge.in: I as a user should have the flexibility of deciding whether I need an OTP to complete my transaction or not. If I don’t want it, I just be allowed to make the transaction without OTP. In terms of trust or convenience, Indians are still very much in the trust category. We still check our restaurant bills for errors and that psyche is not changing anytime soon. The trust that we repose on the older banks is very important for us.
