A report prepared by RedSeer Management Consulting, a market research and consulting firm, has revealed that India’s online retail industry picked up sharply in the second half of 2017 and grew by over 23 per cent to $17.8 billion, up from $14.5 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) last year, Mint has reported.

According to the RedSeer report, the industry is expected to show strong growth in 2018 and may grow by over 60 per cent to $28-30 billion.

“The market showed very strong growth in the second half of the year and we expect that to continue in 2018,” RedSeer chief executive Anil Kumar was quoted by Mint as saying. “It wasn’t just that sale months were (better than year-ago period), even the non-sale months in the second half were much higher than H1. There are enough signs that the market should see very high growth next year,” he added.

The report points out that the industry may not grow as fast as some analysts said at the peak of start-up funding boom in 2015. Back then, analysts expected the industry to grow to around $100 billion by 2020. However, as the growth in the industry dipped sharply to less than 15 per cent in 2016, these estimates turned out to be way off the mark.

Flipkart and Amazon were the key drivers of the growth in the e-commerce industry in 2017. Sales at Snapeadl dipped sharply after its proposed sale to Flipkart fell apart, forcing it to cut cost to survive in the increasingly competitive industry. Paytm E-Commerce, which raised $200 million from Alibaba Group Holding and SAIF Partners in March this year, also contributed to the growth.