Urban India has stocked used goods worth Rs 22,000 cr: OLX

With the growth of disposable income and rising consumerism, more and more people are stocking used goods especially in urban India where the total realisable value of such items is estimated at a whopping Rs 22,000 crore, a survey by online classifieds player OLX said.

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According to the survey, Consumer Research on Used Goods and Selling Trends (CRUST), Indians have a habit of stocking goods they no longer use, constraining space in their homes and preventing them from liquidating these goods to earn money and buy items that are more relevant to them.

"As per the study, the total estimated realisable value of stocked goods across 12 surveyed cities is Rs 5,100 crore and when it is projected to Urban India this value is about Rs 22,000 crore," OLX.in CEO Amarjit Batra told PTI.

The study was conducted by IMRB International across 12 cities in India. The survey was conducted on about 4,800 consumers, chosen randomly across the age group of 19-60 years, he added. "One of the key findings is that people need to think about the monetary value locked in these stocked goods. So, definite and compelling is the potential of the used goods economy that we decided to coin a term for the money locked in the used goods market and call it Brown Money," Batra said.

As per the survey findings, Mumbai topped the chart with more household stocked used goods than anywhere else in India. The survey also said the categories most stocked are kitchen and home appliances, mobile phones, clothing, watches and books. On the reasons behind urban Indians stocking goods, it said the primary reason was they feel that it can be used at a later date (24 percent of respondents), although that rarely happens.

Another 20 percent of the respondents said they have ceased to find value in using the product, implying a change in their taste and preferences, even though the product is in a good condition.

Emotional attachment (17 percent of the respondents) to certain products also makes people hang on to them.

On the way ahead for 'Brown Money', Batra said: "With the growth in spendable income of urban Indians and rising consumerism, Brown Money is set to rise further. We expect to see a rise in this value in the next few years.