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Hi there,
I spend a lot of time scanning through reviews of products I’d like to buy and, TBH, sometimes the comments don’t help at all.
I like to think that’s why live commerce grew popular in the first place: You could just ask the person on your screen all your earth-shaking questions about the shirt they were selling.
I must confess there’s a reason I bring up shirts. I’m on the hunt for one, preferably black, and it turns out that Flipkart’s Myntra – my go-to shopping site – has 6,500 different black shirts for women. Can you really fault me for being picky?
A gentle nudge from a live streamer might have really helped in this scenario. Understandably, entrepreneurs and analysts believe live commerce might be just what’s needed to bring new customers to ecommerce. Given that only about 100 million of India’s 700 million internet users shop online in India, live commerce has its work cut out.
And with all that in mind, my colleague, Samreen, set out to learn whether India’s live commerce scene could replicate the success that the business model found in China. This week’s Big Story takes us along on her expedition.
This week, we’ll also dive into what shopping could look like if we removed barriers like our screens and jumped right into the metaverse.
— Nikita (Bengaluru, India)
THE BIG STORY
Can India recreate China’s live commerce magic?
Image credit: Timmy Loen
India’s short-video players and general ecommerce marketplaces are vying to capture the country’s up-and-coming live commerce sector.
THE HOT TAKE
Building a metaverse for retail and ecommerce
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