The online shopping behaviour in metros seems to have changed during the extended nationwide lockdown as per the trend observed by Simpl, a payment platform.
The company has recorded a surge in the number of transactions done for daily essentials, despite supply and workforce issues faced by merchants.
“The bill size per user has increased by 30-35% across the board. Prior to the lockdown, 30-40% of the online users ordered groceries and home essentials between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. whereas 60-70% users made transactions between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.,” the company said.
Post lockdown, those transactions are happening on an hourly basis, it said adding online grocery and essential shopping are becoming the new normal during work-from-home routines.
“There is about a 30-40% increase in the number of new offline to online users trying out services from online hyperlocal merchants, as compared to pre-lockdown months,” the company said.
Also, the average ticket size of medicine orders has also doubled with a 40-45% increase in the number of online transactions post the first phase of lockdown.
The increase of online orders was majorly witnessed from the metro cities as compared to tier I and tier II cities, it said.
Nityanand Sharma, co-founder, and CEO, Simpl said, “Groceries or essential shopping through online platforms used to happen mostly over the weekends or start of the month before the advent of COVID-19. But post lockdown, transactions are happening throughout the day over the week.”
“The rise in online transactions recently made through Simpl indicates an average 1.5x increase in ticket size and a 40% spike in the overall GMV of offline merchant partners,” he said.
“This is an interesting trend in our bid to promote a safe mode of payment,” he added.
Meanwhile, requests by users to delay the repayments due date have surged by 3-4% post the lockdown announcement.