Mumbai: US-based online retailer Amazon, which has established itself strongly in the Indian market in the last three years, has grown its seller base to 200 percent over the last 12 months. The e-tailer claims that 20,000 new sellers have joined them in the past six weeks to benefit from the biggest shopping season.
The result is clearly visible. Amazon already has a network of 1.2 lakh sellers ahead of the festive season. The marketplace has expanded its delivery network by five times and partnered with over 12,500 stores in more than 50 cities with a majority of them in tier II and III towns, and sales from these small towns and cities have drastically gone up in the said period.
“We have seen a five fold growth in new customer acquisition and 70 per cent of them came from tier II & III towns,” said Manish Tiwary, VP, category management at Amazon India in a TOI report.
The sales increased 17 times compared with last year mainly owing to the huge discounts Amazon was offering its buyers. The new online shoppers are reported to have come from smaller towns in states like Sikkim, Tripura and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. These towns are a potentially huge market that the e-tailer has been eyeing over the past one year to expand the market share.
Read Also: Amazon India Opens Seller Cafés Ahead Of Festive Season
Earlier this month, Amazon established Seller Cafes’ across 24 cities of the country providing on-ground support to seller partners who use the platform to actually sell to the end customer.
Amazon has repurposed some of its seller’s sales offices to set up the cafes. For instance, it now has over 1,400 e-commerce specialist freelancers across 16 cities that have trained and certified to provide help to sellers. While the ’seller cafe’ program had a pilot ahead of the festive season, the etailer said it would continue the initiative based on demand going forward.
Amazon Indian official clarified that the company is going after small and medium business, often owned by enterprises similar to those who form the channel backbone of IT sales in India. “This is a good sign for small and medium businesses, enabling more to join our seller platforms,” said Gopal Pillai, Director and GM, Seller Services at Amazon India [Read the full story here]
With Indian consumers more inclined to buy smartphones and electronic appliances during Diwali, Amazon said it will increase their stocks of smartphones and consumer electronics three-to-five-fold to generate the most sales. Tiwari added, “smartphones have been the biggest grosser for Amazon sales. Television sales, usually most popular during the festive season, grew 25 times on the back of exclusive partnerships with the likes of Sanyo.”