Direct Selling Market in India is Rising
November 11, 2007 | By Monika Mundell | 5 Comments »
Direct selling in India is still a relative new phenomenon according to David Stanley, Vice-Chairman of the Indian Direct Selling Organization (IDSA). The market is currently worth Rs 3,110 crore and is estimated to rise to Rs 8,000 crore by the year 2010.
The current hold off of the industry is the lack of official regulation. According to David, there are some shady companies posing as the real thing, which isn’t particularly beneficial to the industry. At present the IDSA regulates 12 direct selling companies within the country.
They are looking to propose a similar legislation to those of Malaysia and the USA to help regulate the industry. This could mean a huge potential influx of growth and credibility in India’s direct selling market.
Currently around 60% of India’s distributors are women and 26% couples which only leave a small percentage of men. The field is ruled by cosmetics and health products followed by household products.
Trying to regulate the industry does make sense as currently it is open to abuse and this only means that unsuspecting people fall prey to shady organizations posing as a credible direct selling company.
It seems to me that we do live in the 21st century and yet we still struggle to put things onto the map that have been around for 50+ years in other parts of the world. This just goes to show that bureaucracy exists even in the furthest corners of the world and despite our technology age we still struggle to incorporate common sense into everyday business dealings.
Monika
Tags: direct selling, direct selling in india, india, mlm
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this turnover of direct selling does not include sales of lots of direct selling companies which are not the members of IDSA . For more check out Strategy India
Daniel,
True, it doesn’t but the whole point of being a member of the IDSA is to be credible as a company I guess.
But thanks so much for your input, it is always great to hear from insiders who are based within a country.
dear monika ,
there are lots of credible companies in direct selling which are not the member of direct selling and are still doing good. guess IDSA is not a selling point any more.
thanks.
[...] the recent boom in the economy the direct selling concept has still room to grow extensively in India. Direct selling is expected to touch the Rs [...]
Monika ,
This is not the case here in India where i have seen that the only thing which is needed to successfully build an organization needs out of the box thinking, market intelligence mingled with the flexibility of operations , lower infrastructural overheads , financial muscle and power of decision making at the grass roots
This is the reason lots of direct selling companies listed with the association do not make good profits or retain distributors for long.
The reason to this is the management not looking at other industries for experiences .
In fact , during our conversation with some of the top management guys of these direct selling companies we were surprised to learn that they are not aware of their direct competition too.
Plus the association should concentrate on public relation activities in various media which is very important to change the general perception of direct selling here.