Small towns will drive digital business in the future: Instamojo

Instamojo, a one-stop shop for all micro businesses looking to sell online, has undertaken a study among its users and found out that the future of digital businesses will be driven by entrepreneurs from small towns.

COVID-19 has accelerated the speed of digitisation among small merchants across the country, with a special boost given to businesses in small towns, found an Instamojo survery conducted among its user base.

Bengaluru-based Instamojo, a go-to platform for small businesses looking to sell online, has seen a three-times growth in businesses creating online presence in 2020. While businesses were operating in an online and offline mix, most of the entrepreneurs are coming from smaller cities like Patna, Guwahati and Imphal.

In the coming year, Instamojo expects a massive push towards online learning as upskilling will become important for survival. Its education initiative MojoVersity has seen a nine- times jump in enrolments and 11-times jump in merchants getting digitally certified.

Businesses which shared their social media handles on the Instamojo page went up 30 percent quarter on quarter last year with Instagram proving to be a major customer acquisition tool, the report said.

Further, in terms of payments and transactions, UPI has become the most popular instrument. Around 135 percent growth was seen year on year for UPI payments. Also, a large share of these transactions happened in tier two and three locations.

"At Instamojo, we on-boarded more than two lakh small businesses from tier II and tier III cities during the lockdown period and more than 70 percent of these entrepreneurs had no prior online presence," said Akash Gehani, chief operating officer, Instamojo.

He further added that small business owners are making necessary changes to their brands, to the way they operate, and also the way they deal with their customers online to survive in the growing e-commerce space.