Amazon eyes big festive sales from smaller towns, villages

Online marketplace Amazon is eyeing Tier-III towns this festive season. The global brand has about 3,000 affordable large appliance brands on its portal as well as multiple finance options for easy monthly instalments. Its new Hindi option for customers is also likely to help its push into smaller towns.

According to senior officials of the company, from the Great Indian Sale — its largest festive season discounts — this year, the company will make an effort to provide more affordable goods, popular in smaller towns and villages.

“We have added more than 6,000 products across brands under the large appliance vertical,” said Kaveesh Chawla, director, category management, Amazon India.

Last year, the company had 5,000 products under the large appliances category. This year, 500 of the 6,000 products have been added over the past few months in preparation for the festive season.

The company said its strategy included better after-sales services and multiple finance options.

“While initiatives in Tier-I markets during the sale season would continue, we are concentrating on giving Tier-III and the rest the best festive sale experience possible,” said Chawla.

He added, “We have a whole range of affordable appliances that we know would find takers in these markets. But, this does not mean that high-end appliances do not sell in these geographies. We are expanding the ambit of products available so that people have more choices.”

Amazon recently launched a Hindi option on its portal, with plans to reach out to the next 100 million customers, who might be more comfortable with the language than with English.

Now, those going on Amazon will be able to find product information, deals, and discounts in Hindi as well as place orders, pay and manage their accounts in the language.

“This is the first Indian language (we are using)… it will help millions of customers who prefer Hindi. Now customers can do their Diwali shopping in Hindi,” Manish Tiwary, vice-president, category management, Amazon India, said.

Amazon wants to launch its website in other languages as well. But, its plans are more detailed.

Even its video-streaming platform, Prime Video, has a lot of movies and TV shows in Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and other languages. Alexa, its voice-based assistant, will also soon be talking in other languages.

With as many as 67 fulfillment centres across 13 states and storage capacity of over 20 million cubic feet, Amazon India says it now has the largest warehousing capacity among all e-commerce firms in the country. That apart, the company has created a whole new wing of forward logistics providers, which are small-format warehouses within a city for two-hour express deliveries.

Amazon now has 17,500 such “I Have Space” stores across 225 cities and 350 service partners in 320 cities.