The ecommerce battle in India, a large, fast-growing market, has been on for sometime now. Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon, are in the fray to cater to the large 375 million+ online population in India, along with several smaller players, and a new biggie in Paytm.
However, in a market that’s characterised by little differentiation and modelled on deep- discounting and supported by large Venture Capital funding, profitability will be a long, hard road. And to that end, every one of the 3 ecommerce biggies would want to dominate over the others. A recent Goldman Sachs report says the tussle among e-commerce companies in India is a matter of the “survival of the richest.”
While speculations about Flipkart’s exponentially increasing sales and rising losses are ripe, Amazon India wants to leave no stone unturned to establish itself as the leader of the pack.
The American giant, which set foot in India in 2013, 6 years after Flipkart – a local rival, that was modelled on Amazon, recently revealed a ComScore report which made it the highest visited ecommerce site in India. This was addressed to all the Amazon Indian customers purportedly by CEO Jeff Bezos himself.
Now in a recent company statement, Amazon also claims to be the largest marketplace in India in terms of products on offer. Amazon adds 50,000 products on the website everyday, the statement says. While the corresponding numbers for Flipkart and Snapdeal are unknown, it’s hard to say with authority if Amazon is indeed the biggest marketplace in India.
The company has attributed many factors including initiatives like Udaan, Amazon Kirana and AmazonBusinessOnline.in towards its success.
After dominating in the home country USA for over 20 years, and being prominent in many other countries in the West, Amazon has its bets placed on the huge, untapped potential that an India presents. After losing out to Alibaba in China, Amazon wants to make sure that India is still Amazon’s stronghold. Amazon has been fiercely competing with Flipkart and Snapdeal, not only in terms of offering discounts and a famously great customer service, but has been battling it out to dominate eyeballs with a splash of marketing, engagement activities on social media and many innovative advertising hacks, like the Chai carts, to onboard more sellers to sell on Amazon.
In a visit to India in September this year Bezos had said that “The Indian venture [Amazon India] was doing well already. At Amazon, we obsess over our customers, not competitors.”
Looks like Amazon does care about the competition after all.