The Aditya Birla group is all geared to launch a project to back the e-commerce industry. This can be seen as the group’s huge step of cashing in on the rising online business. The online business is flourishing like never before due to rising disposable incomes, rapid adoption of Smartphones and an increase in the number of young consumers.
Recently, Reliance Retail had also announced about its plans of entering the e-commerce arena of India by launching multi-channel shopping from this year.
Prashant Gupta, who currently heads the chairman’s office at Aditya Birla, has been named to be the leader of the new project. Gupta is a hardworking professional and was chosen for this prestigious post due his twelve year experience at McKinsey & Co. Gupta has been able to gain deep insights into the long-term potential of various businesses due to his this experience.
Gupta is an alumnus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and had joined the group as a President in 2010. Ever Since joining, his main duties had been assisting KM Birla in strategic planning and monitoring of diversified businesses.
Gupta’s current job is to do an extensive study and research of the whole e-commerce space and then evaluate the business potential and then based on his evaluation and study, the group would decide whether it should go ahead with the project or not.
In a similar move in 2007, the group had moved the then CFO Sumant Sinha to head the push into the retail business. He has played a huge role in building up the retail business and in taking over Trinethra, a Hyderabad based supermarket.
A recent study conducted by McKinsey estimated that India will have around 330 to 370 million people online by next year. This clearly shows that India is on the verge of an internet boom.
The Indian e-commerce market has been estimated at $13 billion in 2013. Online sales of retail goods amounted to $ 1.6 billion in 2013 and this figure is expected to escalate to $ 76 billion by 2021.
It seems Indian e-commerce market has found a major backer in Kumar Mangalam Birla of the Aditya Birla Group.
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