Author(s): Nupur Krishna, Jagriti Singh
With more than 276.52 M subscribers to Internet services in India, the country is well on its path to ‘digital India’: A flagship campaign promoted by the current government. Under the initiative, there is impetus to digitize sectors such as banking and finance, retail, education, healthcare, etc., and bring about a digital revolution. Indian online consumers are expected to cross the 100 M mark by 2017 as reported by an ASSOCHAM study, which is close to half the online subscribers. B2B e-commerce while forming an important pillar of the digital marketplace and showing relative growth over the last years, as yet remains shrouded in many hurdles from a tech infrastructure, capital, consumer acceptance and policy perspective. While the growth and adoption of e-commerce in consumer markets is well documented, the same cannot be applied to B2B markets as the B2B players operate on substantially thin margins, thus differing in scale and volume of operations. The acceptability of E-commerce among B2B sellers in emerging markets also needs a deeper understanding, as policy initiatives without underlying acceptance cannot be expected to deliver comprehensive results. This paper documents the factors that affect B2B adoption among sellers and assigns weights to these factors based on their relative importance in decision making. It explores these factors under the broad themes of policy, culture, marketplace and organizational factors. The paper is relevant for start-up entrepreneurs, digital B2B sellers, policy makers and academia.