Amazon plans to double down on India investments
BENGALURU: Amazon India chief Amit Agarwal said on Thursday that the online retailer plans to double down on its investments in India, especially in key areas such as digital payments and the Prime membership programme.
Agarwal also reiterated the e-commerce firm’s earlier claim that it was the largest online retailer in India and dismissed research reports that the company had lagged behind arch-rival Flipkart during the Diwali season sale. “This was our biggest season ever…. Let’s look at last year and look at how many people came back. If we look at last Diwali, more than 70% of the customers repeated many times during the year. So, that’s very exciting... In fact, one out of every five of them became Prime members. And this year, the number of transacting customers from last year was more than two times.”
Agarwal declined to comment on the number of units that Amazon India sold during the three phases of its Diwali season sale or the total merchandise value of goods sold during that period.
“The pieces that we were tracking were the sheer number of customers that were transacting... and the sheer number of things purchased. In terms of GMV (gross merchandise value), I’ve always said I don’t understand the metric. I find that a vanity metric. And we don’t optimise our website to run a single day of sale—that’s not how we run our website. What I can tell you is that all the claims made out there were wrong, knowing my data… T hose are completely wrong,” said Agarwal.
Last week, Amazon India had claimed that the Great Indian Festival was its biggest ever shopping event, and that it had grabbed a 44% share of total customers and shopping volume, higher than any of its competitors. Flipkart had at the time disputed Amazon’s claim and claimed that it had been the undisputed leader during the festival season.
On Thursday, Amazon indicated that it plans to ramp up its selection through more partnerships and joint ventures, such as recent deals with Shopper’s Stop and the Patni Group, while also launching more India-specific innovations in areas such as payments and financial services.
“I think our investments are still in the same three areas—how do we add more selection, how do we make it easier for sellers to offer more competitive prices and how do we build for faster deliveries. I don’t think we do anything else,” said Agarwal. “A layer on top of that is that we keep investing in Prime—so video, music, Echo, etc are our key areas.”
Amazon has so far committed to invest at least $5 billion in India, and has already spent well over $2 billion.