“Our India team is moving fast and delivering for customers and sellers. The team has increased Prime selection by 75% since launching the program nine months ago, increased fulfillment capacity for sellers by 26% already this year, announced 18 Indian Original TV series, and just last week introduced a Fire TV Stick optimized for Indian customers with integrated voice search in English and Hindi,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder and CEO.
“We’re grateful that customers are responding — Amazon.in is the most visited and the fastest growing marketplace in India. It’s still Day 1 for e-commerce in India, and I assure you that we’ll keep investing in technology and infrastructure while working hard to invent on behalf of our customers and small and medium businesses in India.”
Globally Amazon announced that its Net sales increased 23% to $35.7 billion in the first quarter, compared with $29.1 billion in first quarter 2016. In India the company has invested $5 billion to date, to rival its prime competitor Flipkart, which was recently in the news to receive $3 billion funding from Softbank.
According to a Business Standard report, Flipkart generated about INR 3,200-3,300 crore ($498-$514 million approx.) in sales during March, while rival Amazon managed to do just around INR 2,400 crore ($313 million approx.) in sales. This was due to the number of smartphones being sold on Flipkart, a segment that it leads over Amazon, which have a higher margin/ purchase value.
But looking at other segments, Amazon introduced the new Fire TV Stick in India with new features optimized for Indian customers such as voice search in Hindi, free data for three months, data monitoring to help customers manage their data usage, and a vast selection of local and global movies and TV shows. According to RedSeer consulting, Amazon prime subscribers rapidly rose to 5-6 million from October to December and now Prime accounts for nearly 30% of Amazon’s active customer base in India.
According to media reports the company signed an exclusive partnership with Dharma Productions and Vishesh Fims to allocate a budget of INR 2000 crore ($310 million approx.) for creating original video content for Amazon Prime Video in India. Interestingly the initial offering was INR 499 ($7 approx.) a month, which comes as a combined package with Amazon Prime.
