E-commerce will help small traders: Karnik

New Delhi, July 6 (UNI) The e-commerce industry in India, with projected growth rate of 95 per cent is the emerging area in IT which can change business methods and help SMEs and rural craftsmen unable to afford expensive channels of marketing, NASSCOM President Kiran Karnik said today.

''E-commerce has provided a revenue generation platform for Small Scale Enterprises (SME) and thousands of Indian sellers both in India and abroad,'' Mr Karnik said at the conference on the new realities in e-commerce organised by ebay, an online market place and National Association of Services and Software companies.

With an increase of 35 per cent in active user base of internet, the e-commerce will grow even more, said CEO of rediff.com Ajit Balakrishnan. He, however, added that this method of business works best where the distance between the buyer and the seller is more and only for products in special interest categories.

However, the country manager of ebay Gautam Thakar differed with him saying that while e-commerce started off in these categories, it has spread to other categories as well.

''The first successful application of e-commerce in India was the booking of railway tickets which rose by 100 per cent in the first two months of 2006 and is fast catching up in small towns.

E-ticketing launched four months ago has picked up to 50 per cent of the total ticket sales in four months,'' said Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation General Manager Amitabha Pandey.

The other panelists included CEO of www.onmobile.com Arvind Rao and Googles online and sales and operations Director Roy Gilbert.

UNI ARB DKS DB2011