According to a recent report titled ‘Digital Classifieds in India 2020’, the Indian digital classified industry is expected to mature three times to $1.2 billion by 2020. The main factors driving this growth as per the report are the rapid growth of e-services, real estate & automobiles, Google and KPMG.
The report that was released on Wednesday presents a comprehensive overview of the current trends in the industry revealing that fact that how the horizontal classifieds will still continue to lead with about 30% market share of total digital classifieds in 2020.
“The ecosystem is ripe for the emergence of digital classifieds. Spurred by the smartphone penetration, online users are expected to grow to a whopping 650 million by 2020 and with every second consumer willing to pay for value added services, the digital classified segment is expected to touch $1.2 billion by 2020,” Nitin Bawankule, Industry Director, Google India, told reporters here.
Moreover, as revealed by the Google search trends, the local searches across digital classified categories have boosted by 4 times in the last four years, with non-metro’s like Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Kochi, Coimbatore, Indore and Jaipur spotting the top positions.
The report also talked about how the Real Estate and e-services are expected to increase by 4 times and 7 times, respectively, by 2020.
“As the digital classified segment undergoes a rapid transformation, it is facing a few challenges like unverified listings and low customer loyalty. However, it is expected that there will be convergence of online businesses since the end customer is the same,” added Sreedhar Prasad, Partner- E-Commerce and Start Ups, KPMG India.
This however will further improve the revenue streams, monetizing possibilities and reducing overall cost of customer acquisition as per the report.
As far as the e-services classifieds are concerned vertical dining, auto rentals, relocation services and home services like beauty services, repair, tutoring and personal trainers are the most popular segments.
“Online jobs market is set to double by 2020 with 63 per cent consumers accessing e-classified. Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Hyderabad are the top ranked cities for online job searches and with ‘Sarkari Naukri’ as one of the top searched Indic terms,” the report added.
The report also emphasized on how the digitally-savvy consumer is happy to pay for value-added services.
For instance, 59% of used goods buyers are ready to pay for quality verification of goods or home delivery; 43% of job portal users are keen at paying for auto application for jobs and 40% of consumers searching for real estate are willing to invest more for legal verification and property check.
Source: IANS
