By Muhammad Soban ISLAMABAD, Feb 17 (INP-WealthPK): In the modern era of technology, e-commerce is the fastest-growing sector globally as its market size has reached $4.8 trillion dollars. Pakistan is the 46th largest e-commerce market, progressing rapidly. Private e-commerce incubation centres in Pakistan are assisting the youth to explore e-commerce market globally. Globally, incubation centres play a vital role in initiating new start-ups as these provide training and technical support to newbies. In e-commerce, there are two main private incubations centres in Pakistan – Extreme Commerce and Enablers. The prime aim of these incubation centres is to train the youth to learn new skills of e-commerce, start and grow their business online. They provide training and teach skills to sell goods on different international e-commerce platforms, including Amazon, eBay, and Daraz. Extreme Commerce is the pioneer in starting e-commerce incubators in Pakistan, and it has now multiple incubation centres in different cities of Pakistan providing training and technical skills to the youth of the country to sell on the world’s largest e-commerce platform Amazon. Enablers and Extreme Commerce incubation centres aim to start 200,000 new businesses in Pakistan and add $10 billion to Pakistan’s economy by 2025. According to OBERLO, the global e-commerce market size will reach 4.8 trillion dollars in 2021. China has the most prominent world share in world e-commerce sales worth $2.79 trillion, followed by the United States’ $843 billion and India’s $250 billion. On the contrary, Pakistan’s e-commerce sales in 2021 were recorded worth $628 million. It is a comparatively tiny market, but the number of e-commerce users in Pakistan is 51 million, and it is estimated that it will reach 65 million by 2025. These incubation centres are mainly targeting Amazon. Pakistan had been unable to sell directly on Amazon for a long time. That led Pakistanis to register their companies abroad in those countries that are on the Amazon seller list. It caused the loss of revenues for Pakistan. But due to the efforts of the commerce ministry, in May 2021, Amazon finally included Pakistan in its seller list and allowed Pakistani entrepreneurs to sell on Amazon. This has positively opened avenues for Pakistani products to the world. But there is a lot more to do to make Pakistan a significant player in the international e-commerce market. Pakistan’s education system is an overdate, as 1.5 percent of people get a job after degrees. There is a need to refine the education system, so Pakistan could produce skilled entrepreneurs in the e-commerce sector. In this regard, e-commerce specialisation courses of one year are being introduced with the collaboration with incubation centres and the Higher Education Commission (HEC). Pakistan has great e-commerce potential. According to Sunny Ali, founder and CEO of Extreme Commerce, internationally e-commerce failure ratio is 90 percent, while in Pakistan it is 40 percent. This shows that by having focus on this sector, Pakistan can increase the e-commerce market size to $2 billion. To boost e-commerce in Pakistan, the government of Pakistan must also play an important role in easing the regulations for sale on Amazon. To sell on Amazon, goods are sent to the company warehouses before selling and it takes time to reach the buyers, but the regulations of Pakistan exports demand foreign importer details at the time of shipment which is impossible to provide. The government of Pakistan must work to ease these regulations. Lastly, the majority of Pakistanis selling goods on Amazon are sourcing their products from China, Bangladesh, and other regional countries due to quality issues. Pakistani industries must improve their standards of products so they can increase their market demand internationally.