New Delhi: The e-commerce industry in India has been growing at an average of 55 percent year on year for the past four years and 7.4 million users have purchased either products or services online.

The global revenue through on-line shopping is expected to grow from $ 1.6 billion this year to $ 6.8 billion by 2016.

Indiantimes Shopping COO Subhanker Sarker told indiantelevision.com that although it was way behind China in online shopping, India was the fast growing in this field in Asia.

Speaking on the sidelines of the launch of the launch of the Godrej Home appliances shopping on indiantimes.com, he said only thirty per cent of those who shopped online in India preferred to pay cash on delivery with the present satisfied by using their credit cards. In fact, he said more frauds happened offline than online. He said a special password would be given to those who go through Shopping.Indiatimes.com to shop on shop.godrejappliances.com.

He admitted that indiatimes had taken minority equity in Godrej applicances but refused to give any figures.

Speaking at the press meet later, he said around 111 million Indians had gone online sometime or another for shopping while 70 million were online everyday.

He clarified that the tie-up with Godrej was based on commission-basis and not revenue-based.

Mr. Kamal Nandi, Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Godrej Appliances said unlike other internet shopping sites, every product had a link to a video which helped the viewer to see and examine the way the product functions. Sarker added that videos were more expressive than catalogues.

Nandi expressed the hope that the online shopping site will help Godrej appliances to move from a Rs 600 million industry to a Rs One billion industry. He said there were more than 500 products on the site and servicing will be done by 31 depots in the country.

Mr. Ramesh Chembath, Assistant Vice President, Marketing, said India had a 10.2 per cent internet penetration of which 60 per cent used portals to shop. He said the target generally was women in the age group of 25 to 35.

Given the huge potential of the e-commerce industry, Godrej Appliances are targeting to grow its online business at more than 150% year on year.