A thousand mobile phones sold every minute, 7 T-Shirts, 3 sarees and 4 pairs of footwear sold every second. $5 billion worth of e-commerce sales and nearly 80 million shoppers across all platforms. All of that in just the first week of this festive season.

According to a Bain report, 3 out of 5 online shoppers now belong to tier-2 or smaller cities and 1 out of 3 e-commerce users is Gen-Z.

India's e-retail funnel is getting bigger and could have half a billion online shoppers in the next 5 years and become the world's second-largest base, only behind China.

Also propelled by the D2C revolution, India’s e-commerce market could triple in size from $50 billion in 2022 to $150 billion by 2027, according to the Bain report.

Also read: OMCs may seek Government intervention over fuel under recoveries | Exclusive

The report also says e-commerce in India is well into its third phase of evolution. One that's driven by the small-towners, who are big fans of reels and the Gen-Z, who are reportedly spending 8 hours online every day! No wonder Amazon and Flipkart have embraced live commerce and organised an army of influencers for their great festive season sales this year.

E-commerce 3.0 is no longer just click-and-order. It's more immersive. Flipkart is entering the metaverse with FlipVerse. Why not? 1 out of 4 buyers on its platform is using the virtual try-on feature before ordering a makeup product.

Social commerce, live commerce, quick commerce, and new rules of the retail game are being written by brands hoping to catch new consumers online.

Also read: Festive demand check: Auto sector upshifts but rural demand still missing

According to Kanwaljit Singh, Founder of Fireside Ventures, the next decade for e-commerce will be all about being omnichannel.

“We are seeing people almost adopting a digital-first for everything that they consume and it is expanding even into services and solutions. So the way of life has changed and COVID was the main reason why it happened so quickly,” Singh said.

So over the last 10 years what worked was the emergence of the digital infrastructure and therefore the opportunity to build digital-first brands, I think the next decade is going to be all about omnichannel and that excites us the most,” he added.

Watch video for entire discussion.