Sex Toy Market In India Taking Off, Driven by Women's Purchases (AVN)

Read the full article by Michael French at AVN.com

Sexually repressed attitudes appear to be loosening, even as country bans online porn.

In India, a country of more than 1.3 billion that has recently banned internet porn, the online sexual wellness industry is now “thriving,” according to a report by The Week, thanks largely to “the privacy associated with e-commerce [that] has taken the shame out of shopping for products that enhance sexual experience.”

Raj Armani, the sexual e-commerce entrepreneur who is styling himself as “the Indian version of Hugh Hefner,” according to SIFY Finance, estimates the potential market for sexual wellness products in India at $3 billion.

A surge in women purchasing sexual wellness products online, according to Armani, was sparked last year by a scene that appeared online as a viral video from the Netflix Bollywood film Lust Stories, in which popular actress Kiara Advani is shown masturbating with a “bullet” style vibrator as her husband and mother-in-law look on. As a clip of the scene circulated online, sales of vibrators—the bullet in particular—“shot up,” The Week reported.

On ThatsPersonal.com, India’s first adult e-commerce site, even though men visit the site more frequently, women do more actual purchasing, according to My Nation, spending 18 percent more per “shopping cart.”

According to Samir Saraiya, founder of ThatsPersonal.com, the online porn ban has not necessarily affected sales of sex toys online, because the two markets have different needs.