e-commerce changed the way people buy things here in remote places in India. They could buy things that was not even in their dreams few years back. E-commerce advertisements cover most front pages of newspapers now. More startups are coming up in logistics space. Amazon, Alibaba etc has started investing here seeing the market potential. Logistics here is a big problem. Since local sellers are feeling the heat, they are doing everything they can to stop e-commerce players.
While there is improvement some local sellers can do they also are not getting a fair fight. E commerce giants are funded by massive amounts of VC money and selling products are unsustainable prices. That has lessened now but it is hard to compete if your competitor doesn't have to make money for a while.
How will this impact people? Many of those local sellers already are very poor. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that families are starving as a consequence. For example, thousands of farmers in India are committing suicide per year, apparently due to economic conditions.
The suicide by drinking pesticides were happening for a long time, especially since mid-90s. The rate of increase has more to do with public policy , price controls and sub-par pesticides, fertilizers and seeds. The cock-tail of GATT, WTO restriction on farmer subsidies coupled with price controls and adulterated products, has created the farmer suicide hell.
ECommerce and logistics have nothing to do with it.
tldr: Distance: 1,865.9 km
Delivery Cost: 45 rupees ($0.70)
Modes of transport: Three
Time in transit: 32 hours 25 minutes
Total time: Two days, 19 hours, 6 minutes
India is a very divided country. So, if you are catering to top 10% of the population you are already in the ball-park of 100 million people, that pretty much beats out every Western country except USA. The number in middle class is about 400million, that is the number to focus at least for immediate future. The rest of 800 million, well, God Bless them!
There is little justice in India if you do no have some kind of influence. So if you are poor = little real justice = yes, India currently doesnt care very well for their poor.
I am very to surprised to see article talking about Shopclues, which is notoriously famous for sending counterfiet items instead of genuine. You could buy pirated Windows or Xbox/PS game DVDs from that site.
The lack of a consistent address system in India is definitely a challenge for a lot of provisioning (my address includes the phrase "Lot where the Cotton Mill was").