Therapy that went viral
No, this isn’t about the vaccines. This is about that day a few months after the lockdown, when I realized I needed an essential therapy for the pandemic.
Retail therapy.
It had been literally a few months since I had heard the instinctively distinct ring of the doorbell of Amazon deliveries. (The unending Swiggy deliveries had a different ring to it..). The whole world had changed their purchasing behaviors. Bangalore’s favorite pastime of mall surfing also had hit a roadblock.
The world in the meanwhile had moved on. Or should I say, had taken a quantum leap? A phenomenon that Lenin famously alluded to, had happened. Ecommerce penetration had leapfrogged — even in a market like US where the e-commerce was only 18% of all retail sales, had become 28% in no time.
There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
in other words, what had taken 10 years to grow by 10% grew in 10 weeks by 10%.
Meanwhile closer home in India, I could sense a similar spike unraveling . Forget about the scientifically collected data, I feel is understating this phenomenon. I go by what I call the “surge of the urge to splurge”, by the middle class. I don’t know about you, but in my case (and my family’s) this urge was quite palpable. And is more indicative than any scientific data that comes out typically after a big lag — It is clear that all the pent up demand in India for e-commerce is looking out for a vent.
The tie to add to the collection of almost 30 that I have never used in the past 10 years (zoom calls included), the fancy accessory for the car, which I haven’t even washed in months, the Dyson vaccum cleaner that costs easily 10 times another one that does the same job — except cleaning out your wallet faster, the gifts we shipped across the country to relatives for their functions we would have otherwise ignored, the insane amount of sanitizers, masks of the masculine and feminine kind matching the wardrobe and a wardrobe refresh to match the newly acquired masks — there was no end to it.
If I go by my and my family’s surge of the urge to splurge (+ similar families that I spoke to) and extrapolate this to the middle class, I think the estimates of the projections are far below what’s going to unfold in the next few months and years. Indian E-commerce is poised for a revolution and it will sure track the staggering smartphone shipment trends, just the same way it helped China reach 14% e-commerce penetration.
Watch out for that sweet ring of your doorbell — It’s an amazon delivery..!
