I was invited to provide a keynote at the Melt advertising event in Delhi. Here’s what I learned about the rise of e-commerce and digital marketing in India…

India was a culture shock for me. I had no idea what to expect. I arrived late at night and went to a luxury hotel close to Delhi airport. The taxi was checked for bombs. I walked through metal detectors. As the capital city, Delhi takes its security seriously. The hotel was staffed by the most incredibly polite and courteous people. The service and food were amazing. For the price of a Premier Inn in the UK, you got a Novotel.

Heading out by taxi (£3) into the old town 45 minutes away was an experience. Most cars have dents. Drivers honk to move other cars out of the way. There are seemingly few rules of the road being followed. There are dogs wandering on the highway. And women sat on the pavements roasting corn on the cob on open fires. There are lots of motorbikes and tuk tuks and lots of people walking and doing simple manual labour – gardening  and construction.

I pay £5 to take a tour of Delhi old town by rickshaw. It’s bright and busy and colourful. It smells of diesel and cumin and sweat. There are lots of small shops and food carts. People are poor. The shops in old town sell food, clothing, car and motorbike parts, and colourful kids toys. When money is tight, buying things for your kids is still a priority.

And while there is the noise and the bustle and the poverty, there are also a few wealthy areas loaded with restaurants and technology.

This is Cybercity. It’s like a giant retail park – all food courts and pubs. Prices are a lot more expensive here. The screens are as big as anywhere in the UK.

And in amongst the poverty and the islands of wealth, there’s an e-commerce and digital marketing revolution happening.

I’m told that the biggest category of ads on Delhi’s out of home ad hoardings is real estate. The next biggest category is e-commerce apps. While there are shopping centres, there are few national retail stores that have a store in every town. Retail chains are regional or local, most often. And this allows e-commerce providers like Flipkart and Snapdeal to teach Indians a new way to shop.

This is why these apps use OOH media, because they have to reach a wide audience and change their behaviour. And while e-commerce in the UK has been moving from desktop websites to mobile websites and mobile apps, India never had widespread broadband adoption, so e-commerce has jumped straight to mobile.

The big retail battle in India is currently being fought between local player Flipkart, and Amazon, who has recently entered the market.

And because digital marketing focuses on mobile phones, there are some huge opportunities.

There are currently 275 million smartphone users in the country, out of a population of 1.25 billion. When Tata Motors wanted to launch a new car, they turned to Lionel Messi and creative production agency Happy Finish to create a virtual reality test drive. The campaign saw them advertise on the front page of The Times Of India and give away 2.5 million cardboard VR headsets with the paper.

In the short time I spent chatting to advertising and marketing people in India, it dawned on me that the potential in this market is huge, particularly for e-commerce and digital marketing.

And it’s not just India that is rapidly growing it’s e-commerce and mobile audience. There’s China too.

In April, Alibaba became the world’s largest retailer. It sold $14.32 billion in one day in November 2015 – China’s Singles’ Day.

Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group also owns TaoBao – the eBay of China, which caused eBay to retreat from the market.

Jack Ma also owns Alipay, the PayPal of China. Alipay has 400 million users and handles 50% of all online payments in the country.

What I learned from my time in Delhi is that an under-developed retail market, in a country with developing infrastructure, has been a perfect breeding ground for digital marketing and mobile e-commerce. There are new apps launching each month. In 2015, 31 food-tech startups in India raised over $160 million, compared to $67 million in 2014. 

But too many investors are trying to take US and UK models of commerce and drop them into India. Because of this, apps shutter as fast as they are starting up. Flipkart’s last fundraising round in May 2015 had pegged its valuation at $15 billion. But in May 2016, Morgan Stanley lowered Flipkart’s valuation to $9.39 billion. 

India is still figuring out what e-commerce models work in the country. But the sheer numbers of people in the country means that the size of the prize is huge, as mobile adoption increases. It’s the same story in China. Which means that there is huge opportunity for digital marketing in both countries.

At the Melt conference, the majority of speakers were from the UK and the US. London and New York are still seen as centres of advertising excellence. But as these countries scale, I won’t be surprised if UK and US marketers start making regular drips to conferences in Mumbai or Beijing to learn about cutting edge digital marketing strategies and case studies.

Viv Craske is the author of Surviving Digital Disruption.

You can order the book on Amazon.co.uk here Amazon.com here (and Amazon.in here)