Tata Group, India's largest business house, is reportedly set to launch its e-commerce site soon, as it looks to tap the vast potential offered by the online shopping market that is expected to grow 20 times in the next ten years.
The group will roll out its online retailing platform within the next few weeks, while the deadline to begin operation is March 2016, a source close to the development told Bloomberg.
For this, the other business units in the group are being roped in to offer their products on the e-commerce site, said a source.
Tata UniStore Ltd's online portal will offer over 100 brand stores, the group said in a statement.
In July, Tata Industries Ltd, which handles startups within the group, had said that it would set up online shopping portal but did not specify the exact date of the launch.
Other top domestic companies have also announced plans to foray into the e-commerce market.
Recently, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) had said that it would roll out its online retailing platforms for fashion and electronic devices by the end of this year.
On the other hand, Aditya Birla Group has already launched its online retailing platform for fashion on 16 October. The portal offers brands of Aditya Birla Group and other companies.
India is expected to become the second-largest digital market globally by 2030, with China in the first place, Goldman Sachs said in a report released in July.
The banker estimated the country's e-commerce market to grow 15 times to $300 billion by then, occupying 2.5% of the gross domestic product (GDP).
During the March to June period this year, investors have pumped in $2.33 billion in Indian startups, as against $844 million during the same period last year, a data from CB Insights showed.
The number of Internet users in India is projected to grow to 402 million by the end of 2015, up 50% compared to last year, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB.
A surge in growth of Internet users should be good news for mushrooming e-commerce firms in the country which have been ramping up their operations rapidly, enthused by the rise in online buying.
