India cracks down on ecommerce giants: The country proposed regulations that would ban ecommerce sites from hosting flash sales or listing affiliated entities as sellers on their platforms, which could spell trouble for players like Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart.

India’s painful and ongoing struggle with the coronavirus pandemic will lead to a second consecutive difficult year for brick-and-mortar retail sales. At the same time, the public health anxieties constraining overall retail will continue pushing consumers toward digital solutions. We anticipate an extended boom for ecommerce in India, including 27.0% growth this year, for $66.76 billion in sales.

China could be ready to launch the digital yuan in early 2022, and India is building a CBDC framework while also warming up to Bitcoin.

Billions of dollars from SoftBank, others are poised to transform India’s digital economy: Broader 4G coverage, along with regulatory challenges tied to operating in China, increasingly make India a land of market opportunity.

It’s Prime Day in June. Amazon traditionally held Prime Day in mid-July but pushed the event to October last year because of the coronavirus pandemic. (The exception was India, where it took place in August 2020.) This year, Amazon will hold Prime Day on June 21–22.

In the kitchen, unexpected twists can result in exciting new flavors. Watch Industry Voices: Spotlight on CPG with Cafe Spice’s CEO and co-founder Sameer Malhotra to see how ingenuity and resilience are driving new recipes for success in the grab-and-go meals category.

No India, no problem: Despite being banned in one of its top markets, India, in June 2020, the app has grown at a significant clip in 2021. With 200 million active users at the time of the ban, TikTok might have already reached 1.5 billion users had the ban not occurred. What this means: Marketers need to consider several factors when planning their ad spend.

Credit card issuance in India has attained a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20% in the last four years. The number of cardholders increased from 29 million in March 2017 to 62 million in March 2021. India’s credit card industry is largely concentrated within the top four banks (HDFC, SBI, ICICI and Axis), which control around 70% of the total market. They are all supported by CRED.

For customers, the new guidelines could add a lot more friction to the purchasing and renewal process, especially as ecommerce picks up in India. The opportunity: While the RBI’s new guidelines could cause trouble for online merchants, it will likely be a growth opportunity for UPI and mobile wallets since customers might lean on these payment methods more to save time once the rules go into effect.

The Indian ecommerce market is rapidly growing: In the last year, online shopping has experienced a swift uptake in India, driven in part by COVID-19 lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions. A March 2021 survey found that nearly half of consumers in India preferred online shopping to in-person shopping in the prior 12 months.