FUTURE OF DIRECT SELLING

Direct selling has various formats; Personal Selling, Mail Orders, e-Commerce, Multi Level Marketing etc.  Direct Selling now become a globally accepted business practice for moving goods and achieving global expansion without incurring the massive overheads and investments usually associated with expansion.

In a recent report, The World Federation of Direct Selling (WFDSA) states that a Sales Volume of $153,727 million is generated by various Direct Selling/MLM companies. It is easy to see and understand how this sales volume is achieved taking into account the fact that there are more than 91 million registered independent sales people involved in selling and distributing goods and services worldwide. It also explains why there has never been a decline in sales revenue even in times of recession. These numbers represents only those companies which are registered with WFDSA.  There are almost three times companies which are involved in selling the goods through Direct Selling model, but not WFDSA members.  If we take that numbers too. the size of the industry must be more than $500000million!

In India, this sector has been consistently registering a double digit growth for that last 15 to 20 years.  The growing Indian market has attracted a large number of Indian and foreign direct selling companies. While direct selling and Multi Level Marketing is a relatively new industry in India, yet in just 16 years, it has provided additional opportunity and livelihoods to over 4 million Indian households and has crossed the revenue of Rs 6000 crores. Taxes to exchequer on account of direct selling industry are in excess of Rs 600 crores. Moreover, estimates point that by 2014-15 direct selling business in India will cross Rs.11000 Cr and by 2019-20 the industry will cross Rs.21,690 Cr.  Again these figures represent only the 18 MLM companies who are members of the IDSA.  There are scores of companies which are not part of IDSA, still selling products using the Direct Selling and Multi Level Marketing format.  Hence the actual figures could be at least three times of what is being mentioned above.  Means, more than one Crore families have taken this industry for their livelihood.  From the present more than Rs.10000 Cr the industry will cross Rs.70000 Cr by 2019-20.  

Future is  bright….