E-Commerce and the City: Vignettes from Kozhikode, India

E-commerce has been making rapid inroads into Indian markets. Historically, markets have been central to the configuration of the city. When e-commerce is changing these markets, we need to assess what digital market platforms will mean for the future of the city’s markets and the traditional brick and mortar sellers. The current research focuses on hyperlocal e-commerce initiatives emerging as alternatives to dominant e-commerce players. Using the city context of Kozhikode, the chapter explores how hyperlocal e-commerce responses are being led by young entrepreneurs from the traditional business communities of the city and how their growth is catalyzed by the Kozhikode’s ethos of solidarity and mutual support. We would like to make use of qualitative research methods adopting a case-study approach with in-depth interviews with different stakeholders in conjunction with timeline methods to unveil this transformation. We focus on four hyperlocal e-commerce initiatives in the city. We find that there is still room for smaller ‘hyperlocal’ players from the city in the emerging digital markets and they would play a pivotal role in the ‘smartening’ of the city bottom-up. In cities where commerce thrived for centuries owing to centuries old trust and informal social control, ‘hyperlocal’ e-commerce platforms are here to stay.