Demonetisation drive by the government is a great step forward towards removing many bottleneck operations including cash-on-delivery in the Indian e-commerce market, said Facebook Managing Director (India) Umang Bedi today.

“The demonetisation move is a great step forward towards removing many bottleneck operations including cash-on-delivery operations in Indian e-commerce market,” Bedi said while delivering a speech on “Digital Disruption Is Just The Beginning” at Global Mobile Internet Conference 2016 here. “As an outcome from a short-term perspective, there is a shortage of cash in the market where people are queueing up to get new currency in, and get more transparent and compliant with the law. So, there is a chance of retailing and e-commerce is slowing down a little bit, but I think it is very short—term glitch, but the upside of that is really good,” he said.

Demonetisation is a right move as it would, in the long-run, drive towards good governance and commerce in large proportions, among many other things, he added. “Is this (demonetisation) right move? Absolutely. Personally in my opinion, I think in the long run it is going to drive digital adoption; drive demand; drive transparency; drive good governance, and drive commerce in a far larger fashion,” Bedi said.

He further said the Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba does a sale of USD 20 billion in a single day compared to just USD 4 billion done by Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon. “Alibaba does a sale of 20 billion dollars in a single day and the whole of India, when we do our Diwali and big bang (discounts) is 4 billion (dollars) at the most,” he explained.

“And add up all the big boys together and the difference really is that the last mile — when 60 per cent of all transactions are cash on delivery. There is that bottleneck operation,” Bedi added.

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