Rise of E-Commerce: Skills Required, Jobs & Salary Packages

By Arrushi Chauhan

E-Commerce offers bright career choices with lucrative salary packages and successful future. In the time of digital marketing, e-commerce and the internet provide an option to work from home, making the jobs flexible.

E-commerce is a platform where consumers can buy products using the digital platform. The manufacturers get an opportunity to reach out a vast customer base. The e-commerce has various types such as B2C, B2B, C2B, C2C markets, and e-commerce portals.

The retail sector in India has been transformed by the advent of the e-commerce. It will contribute to the country’s growth in future. India is a vast market with a population of over 1.3 billion and its economy scales over $2.8 trillion. It has come up as one of the most lucrative markets in the world. Many companies have travelled to India to earn profit in the past and the trend continues even today. Both local and global e-commerce players have high hopes from the Indian e-commerce industry. A high rise in the number of netizens and their disposable income has led to the boost to the industry.

In the coming years, e-commerce will also foster the country's GDP as well as job opportunities. India is bound to witness expansion in retail trade in future. The e-commerce market in India which was $24 billion in 2017, will touch $84 billion by the year 2021 due to a steep growth in the organised retail sector. Today, online companies indulge into heavy discounting and loose funding.

Factors Contributing to Indian E-Commerce Boost

Globalization:

Globalization has helped the business in reaching the people all around the world. It helps in generating a wide customer base throughout the world.

Reduced Cost:

E-commerce has reduced the infrastructure cost by many folds which otherwise gets added in case of offline business.

Easy Access:

It has provided a 24/7 access to the website and caters the needs of the foreign customers.

Helps to create your own brand:

E-commerce helps many players to create their own identity in the market and generates higher profit and loyal customers. Online shopping is the most convenient way of shopping in the current scenario. The users receive their desired products at their door steps. Moreover, heavy discounts offered by the e-commerce platforms, makes online shopping a good experience.

From the perspective of a management student, it becomes really important to understand the career prospects of the E-commerce industry. E-Commerce offers bright career choices with lucrative salary packages and successful future. In the time of digital marketing, e-commerce and the internet provide an option to work from home, making the jobs flexible. One needs to have a computer and problem solving & communication skills.

E-Commerce: Major Sectors

E-commerce can be divided into five major sectors:

Travelling and ticketing: Travelling offers the widest scope in the e-commerce industry. Online reservation for railway or airlines is the most widely used facility by customers. This facility has eliminated the need to stand in a long queue. This business requires trained professional for website designing and promotions and offers good pay packages.

Retail and marketing: In the last decade, we’ve seen a rapid rise in retailing. A huge number of retailers and marketers are attached with the online websites for buying and selling products and offer heavy discounts to their customers. Such websites offer various posts to the experienced as well as fresh candidates to kick-start their career.

Online Education: Online educational websites are on a boom these days. Students can do various online courses through these websites. Parents as well as teachers can seek help from such educational websites for their kids. Such websites offer job opportunities to candidates who have interest in teaching and counseling. A candidate can be an online tutor or career counselor by catering solutions to academic problems.

Classified portals: Various classified portals help their customers in getting a job. One needs to update his/her profile online and the employers will contact the person they think to be fit for the job. 

Hyperlocals: Hyperlocals is the latest trend in the e-commerce industry. It is a combined use of mobile apps and GPS technology. Students may get various job opportunities in this field in future.

E-Commerce: Career Path

The students who are interested to choose e-commerce, can go with four career paths:

Artistic skills: Candidates who have creative and marketing skills to attract employers and recruiters for buying and selling products can go ahead in this field. This field includes companies based on marketing, branding and customer needs.

Management Skills: Candidates who have good managerial skills and can hold various responsibilities in the company may choose fields related to management, logistic companies, warehouse, supply chain and inventory products.

Financial Skills: This field requires financial skills and one may pursue their career in fields such as legal, accounts, HR and financial prospects of a business.

Technical Skills: One should have technical skills to pursue the fields such as IT consultant, web developer, technical support as a front end and back end executives.

There is a bright scope in various fields for youngsters. There will be many opportunities in digital marketing sectors such as social media marketing, mobile marketing, email marketing, e-commerce, content marketing, search engine optimization SEO, web designing, display advertising, data analysis, SEM and customer relationship management (CRM) - there are ample of opportunities for the candidates who are interested to pursue a career in e-commerce. One can be an Internet Developer, a Software Engineer, Web Designer, IT or Technical Support, and Operation Manager. All these jobs can be done using various social networking tools through the internet.

E-Commerce: Academic Requirements

E-commerce has such a wide scope that every field has its own academic requirements as per the job profile. The minimum eligibility criteria are 12th pass in any stream for getting admission to e-commerce related courses. Various institutes provide several courses in the field like, Indian Institute of E-Commerce (IIEC) offers a post-graduate online program for e-commerce business management. This course is equivalent to MBA. It provides an online programming course for 3 months with guaranteed job placements in e-commerce industry. Check the table below for function wise eligibility and skills required along with popular courses and institutes.

E-Commerce: Salary Package

E-commerce is an industry which requires various creative, operational, adaptive, auxiliary and quantitative skills to get a high pay scale. All the fields have a pay scale based on the role of the candidate. The incentives and pay scale are based on skills of the candidate and designation offered by the company. Here is the list of annual salary packages (approx.) as per job profiles:

• For a product manager, salary package at entry level is Rs 7 lakh while it is Rs 20 at experienced level.
• Software engineers and software developers at entry level get Rs 2.5 lakh. At experienced level they earn up to Rs 15 lakh.
• Operations manager’s entry level salary is Rs 9 lakh.
• The entry level salary package of PHP developer, web developer, web designer is about Rs 3 lakh.
• The minimum salary package of a project manager in most of the companies is up to Rs 10 lakh.
• The salary package of software testers and IT consultants is Rs 2 to 8 lakh.

On the whole, E-Commerce has emerged as a promising field which offers good opportunities to job seekers with a bright future. 

About the Author:

Arrushi Chauhan is an Assistant Professor at Lloyd Business School.