The e-commerce sector has seen a rapid recovery with sales numbers now exceeding pre-COVID levels. The monthly gross merchandise value (annualised) of the Amazon and Flipkart-led sector has shot up to $36.5 billion in June from $30 billion in January, according to the data sourced from a RedSeer analysis. The GMV had plunged to $3.5 billion in April following the coronavirus-led lockdown. “There is a systematic shift in offline to online purchase. E-tailing penetration in India was around 1.5 percent in 2016. By 2019, the percent stood at 3. At present, the e-commerce sector’s penetration in India is around 4.5 percent. It means that the last 1.5 percent was added in just six months,” Abhishek Gupta, Senior Consultant, RedSeer Consulting told Financial Express. “However, this shift may not be permanent,” Gupta added. The share of online retail’s monthly GMV stood at 40 percent of the consumer internet sector’s around $75 billion monthly GMV (annualised) in January. It declined to 35 percent of sector’s $10 billion GMV in April but rose to 73 percent in June 2020. Online retail is the only component in the consumer internet market that has managed to achieve pre-COVID growth. While some sectors such as food-tech, mobility, stay, edtech, lending, insurance, and wealth management have seen growth, 0thers, including Travel, have not been able to recover. “Some of the sectors like travel may not recover for the whole year,” RedSeer said in its analysis.

(Moneycontrol)