For new mother Pushpa Madan, shopping for baby essentials online right from her Bangalore home is proving to be as easy as eating an apple pie.

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The 30-year-old business process outsourcing (BPO) employee, who delivered her baby in late July, buys a range of branded products online: baby oils, diapers, wipes, soaps, clothing, you name it. She aims for a monthly purchase, but oils and diaper stocks require refills every 15-20 days.

They are all delivered within a day or two of her placing the payment-on-delivery orders, thus saving Madan precious time and energy (which would otherwise have gone into shopping at malls or neighbourhood stores).

Madan and her ilk are chief patrons, so to speak, of the mushrooming ‘e-babycare’ firms. With focus on the 0-6 age-group, the portals promise to transform the way new mothers shop in India.

“The premise that new mothers find it hard to get out of their homes and shop for baby essentials is the key trigger for the rise in the number of portals. Also, in the first few years after a baby’s birth, offering gifts is more frequent. Online shopping thus is preferred now,” says K Vaitheeswaran, founder and chief executive, Indiaplaza.com, an online shop that sells babycare products.

It is not just the regular lotions, oils, diapers, clothes and toys that sell online. Products like convertible cribs, bottle cleaners, baby food warmers, portable beds, baby pacifiers, CDs and DVDs containing nursery rhymes and fairytales... all these are now just a few mouse-clicks away.

Chennai-based e-firm Baby Vogue India set up shop in 2009 and now sells even niche products like snow suits and fur coats, to cater to parents visiting cold regions. Brindha Nirmal Kumar, managing director, Baby Vogue, says such specialist products are not commonly found at retailers. “Only one in four or five stores stock such items,” says Kumar.

Firms believe there is a huge but highly underserved market out there in cyberspace for babycare products, estimated to be worth Rs23,000 crore, with potential to grow in high double digits.

“Online (shopping) has its own advantages over offline,” says Raveen Sastry, head, products and marketing, Hoopas.com, an e-babycare firm which started in 2010.

Firstly, there is no outlet rental involved.

Secondly, “you can get demand from all over the country, unlike outlets which have a customer base just around their location”, says Sastry.

Agrees Kumar. Her web analytics reveal that products like winter clothing enjoy high demand from North India, which might not have been possible had she run an outlet in Chennai.

Thirdly, unlike outlets which can stock a maximum of 12-15 models / brands of a particular product, online shops can scale it up to 100, says Sanjay Nadkarni, co-founder of Babyoye.com. Thus, new mothers shopping online won’t face limited choices.

“Consumers can get more information online. This helps in making better selections.”

E-babycare sector observers highlight other advantages that consumers enjoy, in the form of warranties, no-questions-asked return policy, exchanges, free shipping (barring a Rs50 delivery charge on orders below Rs149) and payment-on-delivery service.

“We are seeing good demand, a large chunk of which are repeat purchases,” says Sastry. ‘Repeat’ refers to the same consumer buying the same or another product within six months.

In the babycare segment, the consumer often buys twice a month. The 0-18 months age-group records the highest incidence of repeats. Firms say that almost 40-60% of their total transactions are repeats, given the nature of babycare products. “Diapers, wipes, oils and powders have extremely high usage, leading to repeat purchases,” says Sastry.

On an average, depending on the products, the first online order varies between Rs500 and Rs700, while a repeat order could go as high as Rs1,000 or even Rs1,500.

Nadkarni says Babyoye records about 400 transactions every day, 40% of which are repeats. Kumar says her clothing-focused Baby Vogue posts 40-50 transactions per day, with nearly 60% of them being repeats.

It is not all hunky-dory for e-babycare though. Challenges abound. Nadkarni says costs relating to technology, warehousing, shipping and delivery can potentially offset perceived advantages like absence of rent on commercial space.

According to Vaitheeswaran, unlike electronics or apparels, babycare products are expected to be delivered almost immediately after the order is placed. It is also tough to build a scalable business on the back of just one segment, he bemoans.

At a later stage, other segments have to be incorporated, to make e-babycare profitable. “There have been portals selling just books that have now started selling items like electronics,” he observes.