Exclusive Interaction - Ajit Sivadasan, VP, Lenovo India

Ajit Sivadasan, Vice President and Global E-commerce Leader at Lenovo talks about the importance of E-commerce for the MSMEs.

What are the factors enabling a steadfast e-commerce growth?

Ajit Sivadasan - The growth and continued adoption of E-commerce is an established paradigm. However, several macro and micro-economic trends will continue to help drive adoption and innovation.

• The Digital millennial generation coming into the workforce will drive continued push towards digital "everything" mindset. This generation is both tech-savvy and digitally native in their mindsets, so, expect adoption curves to continue to climb.
• Digital payments and the convenience of managing payments using the various innovative payment solutions will help remove friction in the purchase process. This convenience is a significant plus for small businesses and entrepreneurs as they balance their time requirements with work pressure.
• The work from home and study from home trends will accelerate the use of online platforms for various aspects of daily life– from ordering food from your favourite food joint to ordering any number of daily consumables using your phones. Mobile devices will continue to push the convenience paradigm for all users.

There are several other factors that will drive adoption, depending on the geography and overall level of internet penetration. So, while we will continue to see significant growth in e-commerce activity, there will be differences among regions and countries depending on regulatory and economic realities on the ground.

Projections for the upcoming years for the e-commerce industry

Ajit Sivadasan - The E-commerce industry is truly innovating business models and working closely with emerging technologies to drive enhanced user experiences across a number of industries and customer segments. We are already seeing innovations in -

• Omni-channel experiences spanning retail and online and various combinations of these entities. Shop online, pickup in-store and vice versa is becoming more commonplace.  But there is growing recognition about the clear value proposition for each channel and companies are leveraging synergies more than ever.
• More and more, lines between daily activities and purchasing online is becoming murky. Instagram, Facebook aka Meta and several other social platforms have become frictionless in facilitating transactions and this will continue to scale.
• Subscription services and pay as you go are becoming more prevalent making credit more accessible for ordinary people as well as entrepreneurs.
• Loyalty programs, communities and other online engagement platforms continue to demonstrate a high degree of interest from consumers to engage in things they perceive to be aligned with their interests; gaming, students, small and medium businesses as an example.
• Innovation in devices (smart devices, IoT, smart services) supporting augmented and virtual reality will continue to have implications for immersive experiences. Customer experience on phones, desktops and any combination of device and domain will continue to evolve in favour of customers.

Overall, we will see significant feature improvements in key applications and devices, creating more seamless, better engaging and ultimately more meaningful experiences across our daily lives.

How is India an important market for establishing a direct-to-consumer sales channel? 

Ajit Sivadasan - India is a significant market, only really behind China and the United States in terms of size of the opportunity. The significant population of younger people in the workforce will help drive the adoption of both Internet penetration and online activity. With significant challenges of traffic and population density, markets like India are ripe for disruption and decrease in intermediaries. We will continue to see brands establish a compelling online presence across product categories and industries. Services have ready become ubiquitous online and it will continue to scale with new players and old, pushing for scale and consolidation.  India continues to attract significant investment dollars to drive innovation because of the opportunity it represents and local and global brands are all competing to establish presence, scale operations and drive greater engagement.

The Indian market and its consumers will drive a significant transformation.  We will see tremendous levels of activity that will streamline inefficiencies in the digital ecosystem in a substantial manner.

Why creating an online identity with a dynamic inventory management system is of utmost importance to the MSMEs in the hardware IT segment?

Supply chain in almost every case is a core pillar for effectiveness for the digital experience to realize its full potential. As retailers leverage Omni-channel experiences and competition from the likes of Amazon and Flipkarts of the world intensify, the last mile performance will be crucial for customer acquisition and retention. How companies manage stock via distribution and/or other mechanisms will definitely be a point of differentiation and competitive advantage. Managing inventory across a complex set of SKUs is not only challenging but can be cost-prohibitive and create substantial exposure on working capital. Companies will need to have robust and flexible processes on how they manage stock, inventory and customer expectations. Moving goods across terrains like India is not easy and leveraging new technologies for last-mile logistics will be crucial for customer satisfaction.