Amazon’s online live plant market blossoming rapidly; lawn and garden category growing 10 fold

With a corporate name like Amazon, it is only natural that it may possess a few company executives with green fingers, but who would have thought that the live plant category would shoot up as one of the fastest growing for the online marketplace in India. The hike in demand is largely due to people in cities living in multi-storey buildings, wanting to beautify their homes as well as use their balcony gardens to grow healthy herbs and vegetables.

Most popular live plants sold on Amazon:

• Lucky bamboo

• Ficus bonsai

• Golden pothos

Amazon’s lawn and garden range was opened in March 2014 and has seen a 10x growth in the category. Tomato seeds is a fast moving product along with flower seeds. Amazon further plans to add medicinal plants, pesticides and lawnmowers to attract more customers.

Amazon’s plant categories:

• Fresh Cut flowers

• Live indoor plants

• Fresh Centrepieces

• Fresh Wreathes

• Fresh Sprays

“Live plants are one of our fastest-moving product categories. There is a very encouraging trend among customers of gifting live plants during Diwali as a gesture of celebrating Green Diwali. Selection in the category has grown three times. With the prevalence of organic gardening, more customers opt to have a home vegetable garden where they can control the amount of pesticide that’s used directly,” said Pankaj Jathar, category leader (lawn-and-garden), Amazon India.