In May 1998 , the Government of India took the initiative to promote E-commerce by setting up the National IT Task Force. One of the key objectives of the Task Force was to suggest ways by which to proliferate access to the Internet. Its aim was to strengthen the IT infrastructure in India and to create conditions for a large number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to operate successfully. In November 1998 the Government of India decided to grant licences to private ISPs to establish a presence in the Indian market. It was the intention of the Government to boost E-commerce. Today there are 10 large ISPs operating in the Indian market, and the number is rapidly increasing. Goldman Sacks Investment Research study forecasts 9 million Internet users in India by 2003 . This would imply a 76 per cent compounded annualised growth, the fastest in Asia.

Internet has expanded-not merely as a bunch of millions of computers together. It has connected tens of millions of people together. Indian businesses should adopt an approach to reconfigure themselves to exploit the emerging opportunities. Media hype about the successes of the Indians in Silicon Valley has generated a great euphoria here. However, India ranks only 17th amongst 27 net shopping countries surveyed in the Taylon Nelson Sofres Interactive Global E-Commerce Report. According to this report only 5 percent of the Indian Internet users bought goods or services on-line as compared with 10 percent of the users for all 27 countries.

Most Indian companies are currently in the 'presence' stage of E-commerce. While close to 70 percent have a web presence, as little as 25 per cent use the Internet for $\mathrm{B} 2 \mathrm{B}$ E-commerce. About 25 per cent of Indian companies are planning to use the Internet for customer service, order placement and recruitment within one year. Apart from streamlining business processes, many Indian companies are using the Internet to redefine customer relationships.It is also estimated that nearly 50 per cent of businesses are planning to implement $\mathrm{B} 2 \mathrm{B}$ and $\mathrm{B} 2 \mathrm{C}$ E-commerce solutions over the next three years. E-commerce in India is primarily built upon EDI and intranets, theme-based speciality stores, shopping malls, domestic search portals, and vertical portals.

B2B E-commerce in India normally occurs between large buyers and sellers, with large transaction volumes. There is a greater number of B2C transactions, but the volume of the $\mathrm{B} 2 \mathrm{B}$ action exceeds the former. Indian companies and such as Maruti Udyog, Henkel, Dupont, Bajaj Auto, TVS Electronics and Samsung have already implemented EDI-based B2B models. These companies may migrate to web-based models in due course. Other companies are likely to avoid the EDI route altogether and adopt a web based model once communications infrastructure and regulatory mechanisms are in place.

Two of India's major government organisations - National Informatics Centre and VSNL - have established EDI value added network services. Other private EDI value added network service providers include Mahindra Network Services, GE Information services, Manipal Coltrol Data, IBM Global Network Services, Satyam Infoway Network, Global Telecom Services.