India has third fastest share in retail marketing adding over 7 million internet users, growing at an annual rate of 15% among the BRIC nations, according to an Assocham-comScore joint study.

In a joint study undertaken by Assocham and comScore a study titled 'State of E-commerce in India', it has been observed that India, Brazil and Russia are quite close to each other but China has been surging ahead in retail. The China continues on the growth path with over 103 retail million internet users by the end of June 2014. The Russian Federation has also surged ahead with a very high growth rate of 32%. It added close to 13 million users in the retail category. Brazil is also growing in double digits at 13% and added 6 million UVs in the last year.

While releasing the joint paper D S Rawat, secretary general Assocham said, e-Commerce is increasingly emerging as the fundamental sales channel for growing number of businesses. The internet user base is expanding fast and e-Commerce has opened up a big window of opportunity for businesses to expand to new markets with ease and at low cost.

With 75% of online audience between the age group of 15-34 years, the female population contributed to almost 40% of total users. India is one the youngest online population globally and expected to be a consistent trend in coming years.

As per the study, 15-24 years of age group has been the fastest growing age segment online with user growth being contributed by the both male and female segments. The top 5 popular categories accessed online are social networking, portal, search, entertainment and new sites, adds the paper.
 
The paper further highlighted that, the travel category has also been growing overall and the growth has come from all the subcategories including car rentals, online travel agents, airlines as well as hotels and travel information sites. Indian Railways is among the most visited sites in India with over 15 million unique visitors a month. MakeMy Trip, Yatra and Cleartrip individually reach over 8.9%, 7.6% and 3.5% of total online users respectively.
 
As per the study retail category penetration has increased to 65% reach and has grown to 53.4 million visitors a month, an overall growth of 15% annually. The growth has come across all retail categories and most of them show promising transactions and conversion rates along with growth in visitors.

Apparel, Health, Home furnishings, fragrances/ cosmetics are the few categories which have shown growth in the last 12 years. With apparel being the strongest with 66% followed by fragrances/ cosmetics at 12% growth, adds the paper.

''Flipkart group of websites (including recently acquired Myntra) are the most visited retail sites with over 26 million UVs for the month of July 2014 (excludes visitors using mobile internet and mobile apps).  Jabong (with 23.5 million UVs), Amazon (with 16.9 million UVs )'', adds the paper.