India’s live commerce industry to reach $4-5B by 2025

New Delhi: Driven by beauty and personal care (BPC), India’s live commerce market is expected to clock a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $4-$5 billion by 2025, a new report showed on Monday.

Of all the categories, beauty and personal care (BPC) is expected to grow the highest with more than $1 billion GMV through live commerce.

Fashion is expected to contribute 60-70 per cent of the GMV while BPC will contribute the other 30-40 per cent, according to report by market research firm RedSeer.

Live commerce is a form of online shopping where customers make purchases during live streaming video events.

Over the years, we have seen different formats of content with shortform taking over by the storm. It changed how content was captured, perceived and shared.

“Soon, brands followed the route and garnered billions of views in a span of 1-2 days through campaigns, celebrity endorsements on TikTok and later Instagram Reels and more,” the report noted.

Starting from brands like Flipkart, Myntra, BYJU’s, brands targeting youngsters, small towns have campaigned on these platforms while celebrities like Alia Bhatt, Amitabh Bachan, Shipa Shetty among others have endorsed these campaigns.

“However, things changed soon after Chinese app TikTok was banned. But the space immediately saw a number of domestic apps filling the space which kept the shortform momentum going,” the findings showed.

However, after a year of these domestic apps filling the void, brands have now started exploring live commerce on their platforms and on shortform platforms as an alternative strategy to onboard new customers. It is touted to be the next big segment in the dynamic content space, especially for brands.

“Shortform content is expected to majorly drive live commerce upto $2.5-3 billion by 2025,” the report said.

Specialised platforms have more than 100 million DAUs which means it can scale faster and China’s learnings show that shortform can largely drive live commerce.

“So far large marketplaces have not started live commerce but integrating it can definitely be a success. Vertical players, on the other hand, are soon expected to start live commerce,” the report added.

Shortform content is the fastest growing content in India as well as globally.

The market is expected to see a three times growth in users in the next five years in India.

“We expect India to follow the footsteps of China and offer a large live-commerce opportunity,” the report said.