It seems like this New Year has started with a bang for Amazon India. This online retail giant has many plans to accelerate its presence and growth in the country. Besides expanding its product offerings, Amazon is also improving facilities for sellers, which means it is focusing on growing explosively in the coming year. Here’s a summary of Amazon’s new services:
We had already explained how Amazon aims to expand its Easy Ship facility to include product returns and establish its presence in several new cities in India. It seems like Amazon has already kick-started this initiative. A recent report has revealed that the company will be hiring over 8,000 in its delivery and logistics teams over the next seven months. This is more than double the number of people already employed in Amazon’s delivery system.
According to a source, “The delivery and logistics team will touch 14,000 by July.” It currently has 6,000 people in this team. After this has been done, Amazon will beat Flipkart to have the largest delivery and logistics team. Flipkart only has about 12,000 employees in their corresponding team.
However, many people are sceptical about Amazon’s approach to expansion in India. Sucharita Mulpuru-Kodali, retail analyst, who follows ecommerce for Forrester Research says, “India is the smallest e-commerce market of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries and frankly I’m not sure why Amazon is investing heavily in it, when the company has a number of other issues to contend with. I don’t see Indian ecommerce being as significant as Chinese e-commerce anytime soon, and the bet they are making suggests that they think it could be the next China. I’m not sure that is a realistic expectation.”
Speculations are rife that Amazon is investing heavily in India to compete with Flipkart, a home-grown ecommerce giant.
Besides sellers, Amazon is also increasing its range of products or services offered to consumers. Amazon India may start offering music, movie and video streaming services later this year apart from launching its Prime subscription service. The Jeff Bezos-led company is currently considering the profitability of such services while creating a content library, which would be an important element of Amazon Prime.
With this initiative, Amazon India has stepped into the entertainment genre. Flipkart had earlier tried its hand with this, launching its music download program called Flyte. That shut within one-and-a-half year as it did not really gain any customers. Amazon wishes to offer the ‘streaming’ option instead of ‘download’, which is unlike Flipkart’s offering. Let’s wait and watch if Amazon can get this right.
Looks like Amazon India has already begun executing its New Year’s resolutions!
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
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