Over the past decade, global e-commerce has been expanding at an average rate of 20% a year as bricks-and-mortar shops have languished. Although its share of total retail trade last year, at 8.5% worldwide, was still modest. Even in South Korea, the country with the highest percentage of retail sales online, online purchase accounts to 18% of total retail sales. The same statistics is 5%-6% for India and a meagre 0.7% for Bangladesh. However, there is every reason to think the pie will get bigger in upcoming decades, at least for Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh, rapid internet penetration, spread of cheap feature phones/smartphones and a vibrant youth pool brought more shoppers into this fairy nascent e-commerce ecosystem. Also, the thriving mobile financial service across all the parts of the country is reinforcing the e-commerce space of Bangladesh as the most preferred payment method. Having realized the untapped opportunities in this market, the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi already announced to open an ecommerce plant in Bangladesh.