3 Amazon sized headaches for Flipkart, Homeshop18 and others

Amazon starts its India operations with offers on books, DVDs and CDs. The global behemoth has some very serious plans in India and it will give headaches to the likes of Flipkart, Homeshop18 and Jabong.

Amazon has entered the crowded e-retailing market of India. With Amazon.in, the website is already selling books, DVDs and CDs all over India. Amazon.in will in the future start offering cameras, mobile phone and other electronic gadgets.

The launch is innocuous enough and it hardly has enough things listed to actually get a lot of purchases at the moment. But Amazon comes to India with some big guns and these guns are going to cause some headaches to the likes of Flipkart, Homeshop18 and Jabong.

1. The Amazon Fulfillment Centers

Amazon-Warehouse

This is what usually an Amazon fulfillment center looks like. It is basically a massive warehouse with miles of conveyor belt helping with the sorting of packages. According to an interview at AllThingsD, Amazon has confirmed a million square foot fulfillment center in Mumbai, India. It plans to add more such centers in the future. Other e-retailers in India might simply not have the resources to buy up such properties especially nearer metro cities.

2. Amazon Associates

Amazon Affiliates

Amazon has a really well run affiliate program. Flipkart and others might have their own but none are extremely popular as Amazon. Though Indian webmasters might be preferring Amazon because the payout is in US dollars. Amazon India has already hit the ground running with an affiliate program. Head over to affiliate-program.amazon.in and sign up with them to register with their program.

3. The Amazon Products Universe

Amazon_Universe

Amazon has certain things that they can offer, to which Indian companies simply have not an answer to. The Amazon universe is vast and has a range of services and products. The Kindle, GoodReads social network, the self-publisher eco-system called “create space” and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are things that even the likes of Google and Apple have not really been able to dent into.

But there is hope for Indian e-retailers. Online shoppers are a bit more loyal to websites they usually buy stuff from and have had a good experience. Also vendors if they are happy might stick with companies who have been in the game atleast locally far longer than Amazon.

This will mean Indian e-commerce sites better start focusing more on how happy their current customers are and not just focus on getting newer customers. The likes of Flipkart and HomeShop18 already have a large buyer base and might not be immediately feel threatened by Amazon. But I wonder what will happen to smaller players in the sector.

India’s e-commerce sectors is set for maturing but it will not do so before a lot of churning and eventual demise of non-serious players takes place.

What are your views on Amazon India? Do drop in your comments.

Link: Amazon.in

7 Comments

Arun Sathiya June 9, 2013

I personally think that most Indians are familiar with Flipkart, Infibeam, HomeShop18 and Jabong. So, they’ll continue with these guys. Amazon is a total stranger when it comes to Indians. Indians, obsessed with WWW know Amazon.com pretty well. But the average Indians don’t know much about Amazon and they might still prefer the previous mentioned four.

Yogesh June 9, 2013

Online shopping will increase more competition in terms of delivery and price.

Aditya Kane June 10, 2013

@Yogesh: I am sure online shopping will increase and competition is always good. But most people are still opting of Cash on Delivery model of payments. Until concepts of micro payments and online payments are popularized, we might not see a real maturity of India’s online retailing sector.

Rahul June 9, 2013

Pal, i don’t know who wrote this article but you`ll have to work on your english.”Amazon has really well run affiliate program” – what do you mean to say with that sentence? Lot of mistakes, improper sentence formation & the entire article looks very very amateur who doesnt know to speak proper english.

Trying to translate hindi into english will produce articles on this quality only

If this is the kind of article that Devilsworkshop publishes, im going to unsubsribe from its RSS feeds

Also the indian affiliate program by Amazon pays in INR & not in USD.So do proper research before writing

Aditya Kane June 10, 2013

@Rahul: Yes there was a typo in the article and I needed to add an “a” in the sentence you mentioned. Amazon has a well run and popular affiliate program compared to Flipkart and others in the business.

I was not suggesting that Amazon “will be” more popular but rather stating the fact that “it was” more popular with webmasters because it pays in US Dollars.

As far as you not liking the article, well what can I say but it is your prerogative. Sorry, hopefully you will like my posts in the future. šŸ™‚

Rajesh July 12, 2013

Amazon is massive and now they have hit Indian market we will rise in stander of online shopping we hope…. flipkart on the other hand rise $300m .
i see better service coming home! šŸ˜€

Satya Srinivas July 16, 2013

There is little doubt that Amazon will shakeup the Indian Ecommerce market. They will bring lot of expertise with them. There will also be some sort of consolidation in the market with old players merging with each other.

Some old Indian players like flipkart.com too might survive the onslaught by adapting themselves. Let’s wait and see.

Anyhow the ultimate winner will be the customer with more choices and cheaper prices.