According to a Juxtconsult survey, only a quarter of 21 million urban internet population buy online, while just 10 per cent of it are active buyers. I guess there is no surprise here since cedit card penetration is still nothing to write home about. Also, people are very wary of entering their credit card details online, says the survey.

These are the key points of the survey:
—21 million urban Indian internet users in India
—5.9 million urban Indians buy online (28% of all urban net users).
—40% growth in number of online buyers over last year number of 4.2 million.
—But only 2.2 million buy consistently (10% of all urban net users)...but there is growth of 40% from last year.
—However, 11.5 million (54% of all urban net users) search and visit online shopping websites (they are not buyers, though, but e-window shoppers).

The “real active” base of online urban Indian buyers is only about 2.2 million. This is out of estimated 21 million urban users in India. One of the key reasons why online “shoppers” do not actually buy online is the ‘perception’ of lack of enough payment ‘options’, says the survey. Most online shoppers equate online buying to having a credit card. Almost half the online shoppers (51%) attribute the key reason of their not buying online to ‘not owning a credit card’.

Ebay is the online shopping category leader in India
More than 1 in 3 online shoppers (38%) prefer to visit Ebay for their online shopping needs, making the website the category leader, says the survey. Rediff followss second and not far behind, with 29% online shoppers preferring to visit it. Indiatimes (11%), Yahoo (7%) and Froogle (3%) figure in the five most popular online shopping websites in India.