E-tailing, taxi-hailing companies see a decline in transactions post demonetisation

It is not only the offline companies that have had to face the impact of demonetisation, even e-commerce and online cab booking services have taken a hit despite their cashless payment platforms. E-tailing companies has seen a 15-20% decline in their transactions, while online cabs too saw a 3-5% decline in transactions in November, according to a RedSeer Consulting report.

E-tailers' transactions saw a sharp decline within days of demonetisation despite an increase in cashless transactions, said the report.

The decline in revenues in the online cab booking or taxi-hailing app segment was due to the lack of customer confidence in wallets of a few players, said the report. It further added that on the positive side the online cabs have seen a 25% increase in the online payment since November 9 which bodes well for the future, said the report.

The only ones to benefit from demonetisation are the food tech start-ups and online hyperlocal grocery sites. While the food tech start-ups saw 10-15% rise in transactions the online hyperlocal grocery segment grew by 30-40%, said the report.

The Food-tech segment has seen a significant increase in their online payments, with some experiencing about 90% increase. The reason for this huge growth is due to players introducing cashback and Pay

Later offers that influenced more customers to go online.

“Hyperlocal saw a sharp increase pushing companies to hire more staff. Players are expecting much higher volumes over the next 2-3 months with more customers switching to online payments than cash on delivery (COD),” said RedSeer Consulting.

Anil Kumar, CEO, RedSeer Consulting said, “Hyperlocal Grocery and Food-Tech are clear winners as customers don’t have any ready-cash to do the daily offline purchases; but for E-tailing and Online Cabs, the month of November has been a hiccup in their growth stories – both dependent heavily on cash transactions. However, the positive side of this is the number of customers becoming comfortable with cashless transactions, over the longer run this will enhance the pre-paid model for these companies.”