Instagram is planning to compete against e-commerce biggies in India such as Amazon, and Flipkart even as Google too launched its shopping search feature last December. Facebook too had been testing the Indian e-commerce waters in the past. With its ‘Shopping on Instagram’ feature, the company will help customers buy products online. Apart from India, the company is expanding the feature to 26 countries from existing 46 countries, the company said on its website. That seemed imminent since India is its second largest market with 71 million users – as per company statistics site Statista – following the US with 121 million users as of October 2018.

Publication: Financial Express (Online)

Date: January 13, 2019