E-Commerce unlike the common myth is not only about buying and selling of products and services over electronic system such as internet but includes wide range of functionalities like Electronic Fund Transfer, Supply Chain Management, Online Marketing, Online Transaction Processing and Inventory Management. Looking at the future roles and prospects of internet Mr. Michael Aldrich in the year 1979 invented online shopping through the assembling of T.V, telephone connection all together with a real time transaction processing system. The whole idea behind online shopping at that time was to gain higher market penetration in the highly competitive market and to provide ease of shopping.

But at that time hardly anyone had realised that the E-Commerce that started from a basic Electronic Data Interchange meant for B2B processes will expand its roots in almost all business processes. Forrestor Research estimates the USA online retail industry will be worth 279 billion $ in 2015. According to Mr. Rajan Anandan MD Google India the expected India E-Commerce industry is of net worth 7billion $ and is expected to go up to 40 billion $ in the next 5 years.

E-Commerce in various businesses

Under the B2C marketing the E-Commerce has its presence from a pin to Mercedes. We can buy goods and service ranging from fashion, accessories, books, furniture’s, cars etc. It includes the resale market, Matrimonial Sites, Tours and travel and fund transfer. E-payment of bills and E-ticketing in India is serving millions of customers every day.

Under B2B models firms are looking for electronic gateways for making all the contact in terms of dealings information exchange with vendors, suppliers, their corporate clients with the help of E-Commerce only.

Under the G2B models now the state and central government is using E-commerce as a platform for assigning tenders, licences , work permits etc to their potential customer. It not only makes the whole process hassle free but brings transparency along with it too.

Security Risk Involved

According to an estimate 57% of US businesses say that they are losing more  money through computer hacking than through regular crime, which amounts to a total figure of 559 million US $ last year itself. In USA total number of internet user are almost 24.5 crores while in India this figure goes to 10 crore. Countries like USA and UK have got stringent Cyber Laws to safeguard businesses and customers from any kind of malpractice while in India we are still in initial stage as a result of which we still do not have any exact figure of money drain happening because of lacunas in Indian Cyber Laws. Today Britain leads Europe as the heaviest users of Internet banking services, with over a third of the UK population visiting e-banks. Traffic has grown by over 27 per cent in the last six months alone, and the growth in Internet banking is increasingly spilling over into business banking too. The surge in the popularity of these e-banks is not without its problems however, as most of the larger enterprises have, at one time or another suffered some sort of a security glitch. Most of the online systems now boast 128 bit encryption with SSL (secure socket layer) which is as secure as it gets, provided that the bank side security systems have not been compromised. But this trend is far from being inevitable or even undisputed, as a recent survey from Datamonitor showed when it revealed that in the UK, 63 percent of those polled said that they preferred to visit the bank branch, 25 per cent favoured telephone banking, and only five per cent cited the Internet as their favourite way of interacting with their bank. Moreover there is no bad apprehension regarding success of E-Commerce in India which is very much visible from the success of business models like Flip-Kart and e-bay. We can say that even the online banking is preferable among young generations but are we still ready for a E-Banking is still a questionable looking at the lack of Special Cyber Laws for E-commerce in India.

(All data given above is from published sources)

Contributed by SHARIQUE MANAZIR ( Class of 2013, IBS Hyderabad)