No one\\'s buying online yet.

(From Indian Express)

DESPITE the fact that Internet usage in India has grown from a meagre 0.7 million subscribers in November 1998 to over 3.4 million subscribers today-and is expected to touch 35 million in another two years -e-commerce has failed to catch on. Just four per cent of those who use the internet have actually bought anything online in the last one month. To put those numbers in perspective, that means just 1.36 lakh people have bought something on the internet in the last one month. Compared to India, 14 per cent of Australian internet users have shopped online in the last one month, and the figure's a whopping 31 per cent for Korea. The figure is 12 per cent for Taiwan and 9 per cent for Singapore.This is part of the findings of a Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) Interactive's third annual Global e-Commerce Report (GeR), covering 37 countries, released recently. According to the report, in terms of internet usage India ranks in the lower category, though ahead of East European countries such as Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania. The net has also failed to prove as the means that leads to an end-shopping, in this case. Only about 3 per cent of Indians have bought goods or services off-line as a result of information found online. Here, Hong Kong takes the cake with almost 44 per cent of off-line purchases due to leads online, followed by Australia (20 per cent), Singapore (17 per cent) and Korea ( 15 per cent). A majority of Indians, a staggering 71 per cent, have never shopped online and do not plan to shop online in the future. Says Debi Basu, managing director, Taylor Nelson Sofres Mode, India, ''Quite a few reasons have been cited for this pathetically low level of online shopping in India. Twenty seven per cent of users in India said they have not purchased goods or services online because they think it is 'too difficult' and lack of knowledge on such issues aggravates the situation and hence, it is safer buying goods or services in a store.'' So, first and foremost reason for this dismally low performance is the lack of knowledge. ''Most people just don't know what to buy, where to buy and how to buy when it comes to internet shopping.'' he says. ''In places like Korea, Taiwan, ...