Pakistan has a booming e-commerce industry. Its sheer size can be judged by its 30 million internet users, 15 million smartphone users and around 19.6 million active social media users. These days, every business has access to a wider marketplace by having online shopping in goods and services. Thus, this gives customers and businesses access to a global marketplace which opens up many more options and opportunities for choice and expansion.
In terms of e-commerce, online shopping is especially growing momentum at a very fast pace recently with websites dealing in all of sorts of goods and services ranging from tech products such as mobiles and computers, clothing, food and even vegetables being sold by the website sabzi.pk. The world’s tech incubator, outside US and China, Rocket Internet could also predict about Pakistan’s huge e-commerce potential. It has launched a number of online portals such as: Daraz.pk, Kaymu.pk and Foodpanda.pk that deal in these food, goods and services. Another portal of theirs is an online real estate marketplace is Lamudi.pk, which deals in the buying and selling of properties online.
Thus, this shows that Pakistan has come a long way in expanding its marketplace by making use of e-commerce which makes it come into direct competition with other global businesses and companies such as Amazon and eBay. However, of course, there is still a lot of room to grow and Pakistan needs to keep up with the fast changing trends that are being brought about globally.
Naturally, the customer and a business cannot be the only ones who play a role in this growing of the marketplace. The government plays a major role in this as well since it needs to create the perfect environment for these businesses and startups to grow such as by providing loans, lowering tax rates etc. [junkie-alert style=”white”] One such way that our government has encourages entrepreneurship is by introducing 4G and LTE services into Pakistan which is a great harbinger for better e-commerce[/junkie-alert] It has been reported that there are approximately 12 million 3G and 4G users as of March 2015. Of course, there are a lot of ways this still needs to be improved but it is certainly a step forward and the government needs to realize that it needs to take such steps in order to be in direct competition with other countries.
Currently, the situation is such that businesses cannot do without e-commerce therefore those businesses that are presently active or new startups need to incorporate this in order to gain better opportunities. The government also needs to simultaneously ensure that this is able to be done by enforcing the right policies which encourage businesses.