More and more youngsters in Calcutta are taking to e-commerce, either to supplement their pocket money or for the convenience of shopping from home. A Telegraph picture

Ronak Patel, 24, started selling digital cameras online when he was a student. Now, he has a full-fledged business.

Vaibhav Gupta, a student of St Xavier’s College, has been selling hard disks, MP3 players and Zippo lighters on the Internet for six months.

Homemaker Deepti Agarwal was introduced to e-commerce by her brother-in-law 10 months ago. She has been selling jewellery online since then.

Youngsters in Calcutta are waking up to cyber shopping. More and more of them are logging on either to supplement their pocket money or for the convenience of shopping from home.

“Online shopping is becoming more popular because of rising disposable income and lack of time,” said Muralikrishnan B, the director (category and management) of ebay, India.

Men in the age group of 18 to 25 years constitute the main customer group of the popular shopping portal.

Students like Gupta are taking to online trading primarily to augment their pocket money. He earns nearly Rs 15,000 a month by selling gadgets on ebay.

“It does not make sense to ask for extra pocket money from parents all the time. This way, I can get the cash myself,” said Gupta.

Prasanna Singh, a techie, shops online because he does not get what he wants in the local market. He prefers to check out websites for CDs and T-shirts for himself and gifts for his sister in the US.

“I don’t get the CDs I want in the local market so I have to buy them online. A wider choice of T-shirt designs, across all price ranges, is available on the Internet,” said Singh, whose favourite portals are Amazon.com and Allposters.com.

Rediff, Sify and homeshop18 are some of the other shopping sites popular among Calcuttans.

The trend is to buy gadgets like mobile handsets and accessories, computer peripherals like hard disks and data cards, MP3 players and video games on the Internet.

“The buyers were more interested in jewellery, watches, health and beauty products, kitchen and home appliances, apparel and accessories last year. Electronic gadgets are more popular now,” said Deepa Thomas, the senior manager (corporate communication and pop culture) of ebay, India.

“Online trading will increase if sellers focus on gadgets that are in demand in the city,” said Muralikrishnan.