E-Commerce India - More online re-charge options

Mobile, DTH and data-card recharge online sites are mushrooming. http://mobiqwik.com and http://rechargeseva.com are two more such sites operating in Indian domain. Telecom operators have commoditized pre-paid recharge business through authorized agents in kirana stores across nook and corner of India. This helps them with mobile SIM card and Internet data-card business. What happens to all these agents when the recharge business turns online?

It is estimated that there are about 100 million Internet users (includes those who access Internet from cyber cafes) in India. The number of people who have credit / debit cards are only a subset of that. Within that group, people willing to buy online would be a minor share. It seems that the count of people who made online transactions till now are about 10 million. If the number of mobile pre-paid users is 800 million, it is still a long way to attract all these people to recharge pre-paid services online. No worries about the authorized kirana store agents round the street corner :-)

E-Comerce India - Prepaid Online Re-Charge

India has almost 900 million mobile connections. More than 90% of them are pre-paid connections ! With so many members relying on pre-paid services, where does one re-charge their mobiles typically? There are many avenues to recharge - individual telecom operator outlets, kirana stores who are authorized to recharge our mobile from their mobiles, scratch-cards, certain bank ATMs or even online bank accounts. There is some constraint or the other in all the above channels.

How about making use of http://paytm.com or http://freecharge.in to re-charge pre-paid services online. Need not move an inch from your comfy seat at home. These are sites with simple interface, which are built for the sole purpose of charging pre-paid connections. The beauty is that you can even re-charge your Direct-to-home (DTH) or data card connections also. That might bring a few more million users to these sites. Paytm.com has started supporting payments even for post-paid connections.

The best part in re-charging from these sites is that they provide coupons worth the amount that we re-charge. On the face of it, it looks like a great bargain. I wonder - what took it so long for this simple service to emerge online!!