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E-commerce Accelerates Online shopping has seen a significant traction during the pandemic lockdown period and this is likely to be a sustainable shift
— By R. Narayan
U
ndoubtedly, the past few months have been amongst the most challenging in recent decades. The super contagious Covid-19 pandemic has most countries reeling under a growing number of infections and their economies hurting with lockdowns enforced to keep the pandemic in check.
fortable with the convenience of digital banking as well.
Even as countries battle hard against covid-19, one of the unintended beneficiaries of the pandemic has been the traction seen in e-commerce and consumers take to online shopping in a much bigger way. In the early community lockdown periods, when most offices and public places were shut and people were mostly in work from home mode, the spike in online shopping was sharp.
While e-commerce was definitely growing in the past several years, it may have turned a significant corner in 2020 and has become a compulsive feature of our lives. As offices reopen and life gets backs to a new kind of normal, and even in the likelihood of a vaccine giving us immunity against corona, this transition of shopping in a larger way towards online is likely to sustain. In terms of categories like retail and especially groceries, a good number of shopper may still get back to shopping themselves at the hypermarkets. But even those compulsive shoppers at the brick and mortar stores, will most likely do online shopping more frequently than they have ever done.
From groceries to electronics, medical supplies to miscellaneous, there has been a sea change in the way people just go online and shop for what they want. Most people are now com-
Khalil Alami – CEO at the Dubai-based payment gateway firm Telr agrees with the view that there has been a marked increase in digital transactions across the region over the past
SMARTSMB / July 2020
