Currency ban will remove bottleneck operations, will boost e-commerce market, says Facebook

Giving thumbs up to PM Narendra Modi’s demonetisation drive, Facebook Managing Director (India) Umang Bedi, on Thursday said that currency ban is a great step forward towards removing many bottleneck operations including cash-on-delivery in the Indian e-commerce market. He also said that the problems like cash-strapped situation across India is temporary but the move will yield great results in long run.

"The demonetisation move is a great step towards removing many bottleneck operations including cash-on-delivery operations in Indian e-commerce market," Bedi said while delivering a speech on "Digital Disruption Is Just The Beginning" at Global Mobile Internet Conference 2016 in Bengaluru.

"As an outcome from a short-term perspective, there is a shortage of cash in the market where people are queueing up to get new currency in, and get more transparent and compliant with the law. So, there is a chance of retailing and e-commerce is slowing down a little bit, but I think it is very short-term glitch, but the upside of that is really good," he said.

Demonetisation is a right move as it would, in the long-run, drive towards good governance and commerce in large proportions, among many other things, he added. "Is this (demonetisation) right move? Absolutely. Personally in my opinion, I think in the long run it is going to drive digital adoption; drive demand; drive transparency; drive good governance, and drive commerce in a far larger fashion," Bedi said.

He further said the Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba does a sale of USD 20 billion in a single day compared to just USD 4 billion done by Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon.

"Alibaba does a sale of 20 billion dollars in a single day and the whole of India, when we do our Diwali and big bang (discounts) is 4 billion (dollars) at the most," he explained. "And add up all the big boys together and the difference really is that the last mile - when 60 per cent of all transactions are cash on delivery. There is that bottleneck operation," Bedi added.