The Internet Commerce Summit (ICS) 2021, India’s largest two-day e-commerce intelligence business event organised by IMAGES Group in association with GreenHonchos, kick-started here today. In his inaugural address, Manish Tiwary, Vice President, India Consumer Business, Amazon, said, “The government’s vision of a trillion-dollar digital economy is clearly a symbol of the opportunity that exists for the development of new ecosystems in diverse sectors. Digital cooperation presents immense opportunities that, if harnessed properly, will allow both consumers and businesses to drive tremendous value, productivity and efficiency. Moreover, it helps to bridge the rural-urban divide and brings many new users to the fore.” Sharing his thoughts on the importance of hyperconnectivity in transforming e-commerce, Sam Pitroda, Patron and Guest of Honour, said, “Connectivity is all about openness, accessibility, democratisation, decentralisation, networking and ultimately, transformation. Democratisation is the starting point of hyperconnectivity – getting to everyone in the country with information about all types of products and services available. The second is decentralisation of implementation and the third is demonetisation of services. Hyperconnectivity is also about content and is the key to better e-commerce. The issue today is that we are using hyperconnectivity to do the same things we are used to doing as opposed to a very fundamental question – what is it that we can do with hyperconnectivity that we have never done before? That knowledge is going to be critical in e-commerce.”
Earlier, Saloni Nangia, President, Technopak Advisors, highlighting 10 noteworthy e-commerce trends shaping business today, spoke about the unprecedented growth of 50% over the previous year in e-commerce, with food & grocery enjoying the biggest share of the pie.
Sabeer Bhatia, Co-founder, Hotmail and ShowReel and Rajiv Makhni, technology journalist and Managing Editor, NDTV, had the audience hooked! The duo spoke at length about Hotmail and ShowReel, and Bhatia’s learnings from some of the other ventures that he invested in over the years. Bhatia spoke about the founding of ShowReel and what it really
takes to be a disruptor in today’s e-commerce space. Makhni also engaged in a tête-à-tête with Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Padma Shri Awardee and Co-founder, Info Edge and Ashoka University, and they spoke about making history with a single idea.
Beerud Sheth, Co-founder & CEO, GupShup, in his keynote address, spoke about conversational commerce. He said, “Consumers want to engage with brands directly and that’s causing the rise of the D2C phenomenon. Websites and Apps are declining in effectiveness. Mobile web experiences were designed for the big screen and often don’t scale very well on to the small screen.” With consumer attention spans shortening, messages are more effective than long form of communication such as email, Social Media, etc., he added.
The day also featured the unveiling of two powerful research books – India Phygital Index 2021 powered by Vinculum Group and India D2C Yearbook 2021 powered by GreenHonchos. While the former is the first-ever in-depth multi-channel commerce preparedness report of 250+ Indian retailers and brands with focus on eight overall truths of omnichannel adoption, the latter is a first-of-its-kind yearbook mapping the milestones of 100 Indian D2C brands across 9+ consumption categories.
Others who spoke included Devesh Khandelwal, CRO, Pickrr; Ajay Kapur, CTO, Limelight Networks; Piyush Chowhan, Group CIO, Lulu Group International; Ankur Gattani, VP of Growth & Marketing, WebEngage; Navin Joshua, Founder/ Director, GreenHonchos; Dipali Goenka, CEO and Joint MD, Welspun; Kavitha Rao, Country Commercial Manager, IKEA India; Rajeev Chaba, President and MD, MG Motor India; Rajul Agarwal, Associate MD, Accenture; Ramneek Khurana, Co-founder, Lenskart; Abheek Singhi, Senior Partner and MD – Consumer, Retail, GrowthTech – Asia Pacific, The Boston Consulting Group; Alok Arya, Head – Digital Marketing (Consumer Porducts), Piramal Group; Sachin Vashishtha, Director – Digital Marketing, PaisaBazaar; Vipul Mishra, CMO, Reliance Retail, etc.
