After food, Punjabis devour e-products

Front runners

The Punjabi penchant for food is well known. But now, thanks to the younger generation, fitness and lifestyle products are increasingly becoming popular, a survey on the online shopping list of young Punjabis shows.

Fitness equipment like treadmills and lifestyle items like sunglasses are a big hit among flamboyant Punjabis.  Also, weight training equipment, nose rings and home curtains are high on their online trading lists.

This has been revealed in leading online shopping portal eBay India census guide released here.

In comparison, online shoppers in neighbouring Haryana opted mostly for shopping of pens. In Chandigarh, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, the preference of online shoppers has been mobile accessories, memory card readers, women’s fragrances and designer pens and not to forget cars.

Other shoppers picked up bluetooth dongles, DVD packs, exercise cycles, computer soundcards and men’s metal frame sunglasses.

“These online shopping trends were observed in the eBay census that studied the online transactions on the portal in 4,306 e-commerce hubs across the country,” Malini Sharma Thakur, an eBay India trend watcher said here.

“The trends as seen in Punjab and Chandigarh reveal that people here are quite active online shoppers. The region has very interesting online buying and selling trends,” she pointed out.

The eBay census guide documents key trends in online buying, importing, selling and exporting goods across India.

 She said that the survey was not only about shopping from the region. Products being sold from the region (Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh) were also being bought in the United States, followed by China, Britain, Hong Kong and Thailand.

While Chandigarh was ranked 9th rank nationally in online shopping, Punjab was the 11th most active state on eBay. Company officials, however, did not disclose the exact business generated from the region.

India’s Top three e-Commerce hubs are Delhi, Mumbai and Jaipur.

An overview of the online trading trend in Chandigarh stated that people purchased 47 per cent of technology products while lifestyle products formed 56 per cent of the imports.

Notably, the maximum number of chessboards sold worldwide was sold from Chandigarh.