The Indian e-commerce market is growing at 30% a year and eBay, the worldwide leader in online marketing and online auction, is expecting a tremendous spurt in growth over the next three years. This was revealed by eBay President & CEO John Donahoe in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

“In India, it is half a billion US dollar business e-commerce today. There is no reason why that cannot double in the next three years and then double in the following three years after that,” said Mr. Donahoe.

One of the reasons pointed out for this sudden explosion in e-commerce is the imminent arrival of 3G and mobile broadband, leading to mobile commerce. “What you are going to see in India…is with things like mobile devices, people accessing the internet seven days a week, 24 hours a day. You don’t have to be at a laptop, you don’t have to be at a desktop, you don’t have to be at a computer, you can be standing in line at the coffee shop or waiting for the bus with the smartphone or be standing in a store and use an SMS or text to discover where the price of an item you are thinking of buying is online. Things like that are pulling people into internet and e-commerce. As a result of that, line between online and offline is blurring,” he elaborated.

Mr. Donahoe added that eBay has at present 2.5 million registered users in India. He said that e-commerce sites like eBay not only offers a platform to buy and sell products, but also create direct and indirect jobs and help people earn a livelihood. For almost 12,800 sellers, eBay India is the primary or secondary source of income.

Regarding payment issues Mr. Donahoe said, “India is getting better on all the key friction points that reduce things like e-commerce… PaisaPay has been the way we have done that at eBay… Trust is growing online in India.”