India is the leading Asian market for social commerce. The country was introduced to online shopping via e-commerce a while back, however, the ascent of social media and the growing number of users in the segment gave rise to social commerce. The amalgamation of social media and shopping has resulted in the tool that is helping in securing the future of the Indian market while allowing the people of the country to choose from diversified options.

The social commerce market in India (in terms of gross merchandise value) was estimated at $2 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $16-20 billion by 2025 and $60-70 billion by 2030, according to a Bain & Company report.

As social commerce has high growth potential, various D2C brands like Bombay Shaving Company, The Man Company, Plum, WK Life, and FabAlley are cashing in on this trend and experiencing growth.

Social Commerce Revolutionizing the Future of E-Commerce

Social commerce is one of the most rapidly expanding concepts among retailers. As more and more people are adapting to the internet culture, it has become the trending space to leverage online customers. Owing to these rapidly emerging trends, the Indian social commerce sector is expected to grow twice the size of the current e-commerce market in the near future.

“Plain-vanilla e-commerce which is about adding to cart and checking out assumes that consumers know what they are looking for. Contrast it to the real-world experience of assisted purchasing, and one realizes the gap in e-commerce as we know it today. People have more questions than answers when they look at any new product, and social commerce is a great way of scaling this information dissemination in an easy and smartphone-friendly way,” Shankar Prasad, Founder and CEO, Plum said.

E-commerce is likely to be friendlier towards repeat purchases, commodity purchases, and awareness-dependent purchases. Discovery-led purchases are going to be heavily driven by social commerce.

Betting Big on Social Platforms

At present, Bombay Shaving Company and The Man Company are betting big on social commerce sites like Trell, Simsim, Meesho, BulBul, and Shopsy. These brands are using their social media to interact with consumers, which ultimately drives sales.

“At present, we are witnessing approximately 8-10 percent revenue from these social commerce platforms on overall marketplace business. We are assured of gaining higher returns from these platforms in the near future,” Hitesh Dhingra, Founder, The Man Company asserted.

“7-8 percent of our current business is coming from these social commerce sites. We expect it to contribute around 15 percent by the end of this year,” Deepak Gupta, COO, Bombay Shaving Company added.

Brands like WK Life, Plum, and FabAlley are present across social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.

“We are present on Instagram and YouTube. These websites contribute 7-8 percent of our total sales. We would pilot with live streaming and live commerce on YouTube in the next few months. We will also start selling through WhatsApp soon,” Tanvi Malik, Co-Founder, FabAlley stated.

“Instagram and Facebook are the most used social commerce and hold a lot potential for the retail brands. We have recently established our presence on social commerce and for now, we are getting good responses and we are expecting more than 50 percent share of our revenue from social commerce,” Rohit Sahni, Co-Founder and CEO, WK Life added resonating the similar thoughts.

Gaining Consumer Traction

Social commerce leverages a combination of instant product purchases along with audience participation. It involves social media and online media that support social interaction between the users and brands. This opens communication channels between brands and their audiences, further helping in building credibility. “Gen Z and millennial consumers are highly driven by video content and social media these days. Therefore, we want to be present at all possible channels to tap our customers actively and build trust among them. This step helps immensely in getting visibility amongst Tier-II and-III customers,” Dhingra said.

Social commerce has opened a new consumer base for D2C brands, helping them to reach Tier-I, II, and-III cities. “Through our website, we used to reach out to 200-250 cities in India. However, social commerce has taken this to 1,000 cities over the last one and a half years. It has opened the gate for a new set of consumers, which are majorly coming from Tier-II and-III cities. We focus on high-selling low-value products on social commerce platforms to acquire consumers,” Gupta added.

Social commerce also helps brands to develop a personal connection with their audience. “Being a Gen-Z brand, it is providing us the much required platform to reach out to our customer base directly on social media. Consumers are getting aware of a lot of new brands which are getting new technologies and getting attracted towards the new brands in the market and obviously great marketing have a lot of emphasis on the same behavior of the consumers,” Sahni said.

“Social commerce is also effectively bridging the gap between content and commerce. Also, the process of content creation is decentralized and hence also scaled multi-fold compared to centralized content creation,” Prasad added.

Leveraging Consumer Shopping Habits on Social Commerce

Social commerce is indeed a better way to show the use and benefits of the products in the consumer’s language and tonality. This gives consumers ease and comfort, which is similar to purchasing offline. Here is how you can leverage social commerce to gain more consumer traction:

Social Shopping: Social media stores enable people to buy where they connect to millions of users through a social media platform. For instance, retailers and brands can have a storefront on Facebook.

Rating and Reviews: Ratings and reviews are the original social commerce tool-set that allows people to exchange product feedback and inform about each other's choices with independent views and experiences.

Recommendations and Referrals: Whereas ratings and reviews are generally visible to all, recommendations and referrals are usually personalized social media endorsements for online goods and services designed to realize the referral value of customers and advocates.

Future of Social Commerce

Social commerce is going to revolutionize the way consumers shop as it makes the discovery of products easy and open more avenues to interact with the brand.

“As compared to the brick-and-mortar business model, social commerce helps in cost-effectively reaching the target audience with limited investments. Also, it can give a lot of insights to the businesses on consumer opinions and reactions to products that are being marketed. Many businesses are now running on social commerce sites and don’t have any physical stores or locations. So basically, India is going through a boom of the digital world in the business, and in the upcoming times it is definitely going to increase,” Sahni said.

“In the near future, we will see the trend of video commerce going up as it is an immersive concept for shopping. Technology being the core in the D2C model has expanded the scope for social commerce evolution,” Dhingra concluded.