Gujarat Hub for Electric Vehicles, E-commerce Wins Big in India’s Festival Season

October 3, 2017 Posted by India Briefing Written by Dezan Shira & Associates Reading Time: 2 minutes

Gujarat makes electric push for India’s auto market

India is pushing for clean energy and technologies across its economy, including in the automobile industry. This comes after a recent announcement by China’s Vice-Minister for Industry, Xin Guobin, who spoke of a tentative national plan to phase out fossil fuel vehicles.

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India and China represent the world’s two biggest auto markets, and their future consumption patterns will significantly impact the global clean energy market – worth US$50 billion in 2016.

In India, the state of Gujarat wants to cement its position as the next Detroit of the auto-manufacturing world, and this includes the e-vehicle space, too.

Key players in the electric vehicle making segment in Gujarat are Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp., JSW Group, China’s MG Motors India, and Tata Motors.

These firms intend to produce battery operated vehicles and related auto components in their factories in the state, within the next five years.

India wants to phase out fossil-fueled cars by 2030.

India’s e-commerce firms see high sales this festive season

This festive season was the biggest shopping event for India’s online retailers in terms of units sold, profits generated, market share, and number of customers who shopped online.

India’s online marketplace generated approximately US$1.5 billion in the five-day festive sales, starting from September 19 – offering heavy discounts and promotional offers. This will continue till Diwali, end of October.

The country’s largest online retailers – Flipkart and Amazon, recorded a twofold increase in gross sales compared to this period last year. They also added 70 percent new consumers to the online marketplace, mostly from lower-tier cities. While Flipkart managed to grow its market share to 58 percent, Amazon increased it to 26 percent.

According to market analysts, the robust festive season has set the conditions right for India’s e-retailers to finish the year strongly in terms of overall growth.

India WEF report shows country’s progress in ICT indicators

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has ranked India 40 out of 137 countries in its global competitiveness ranking report for 2017. Albeit one rank lower than last year’s, industry experts say that India continues to show signs of economic progress.

The report, for instance, highlights India’s improvement in information and communications technologies (ICT) indicators, particularly internet bandwidth per user, mobile phone and broadband subscriptions, and internet access in schools.

Currently, India ranks 66 in infrastructure, moving two positions up from last year; 75 in higher education and training, up by six positions; 107 in technological readiness; 75 in labor market efficiency; and third in market size. The country has also shown considerable improvement across key parameters crucial to its future productivity and prospects.

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