Amazon eyes top slot in Indian online fashion space

Amazon had built its own selection of brands during the six-day festive sale, with standalone e-commerce players such as Aditya Birla group owned Abof.com

Online marketplace behemoth, Amazon says it would soon emerge as India's largest fashion e-commerce player overtaking local rival Flipkart-Myntra-Jabong combine, and claimed it was already ahead of rivals in collection of products and number of customers it serves.

Amazon had built its own selection of brands during the six-day festive sale in October first week, with standalone e-commerce players such as Aditya Birla group owned Abof.com and Bluestone selling their wares on its platform.

"I think we are number one in the way we service customers, we have the largest selection and collection of products and that is what matters to us. If I look at the trend line based on the metrics that matter to us, if ensure we have the widest and most relevant selection, more brands, deliver in an outstanding manner, we will be the leader of fashion in India sooner than later," Arun Sirdeshmukh, Head, Amazon Fashion. "We are pretty much at the top of the pile when it comes to the way we engage with customers, we have invested and worked on it".

Fashion was one of the three verticals that did extremely well on Amazon during its 'Great Indian Festival Sale' and accounted for almost a third of the total 15 million units that the company shipped during the five-day sale, said an Amazon official who did not want to be named.

Fashion and apparel is among the top sold items for Indian e-commerce players. Myntra, owned by Flipkart, is looking at profitability from next year with focus on higher margin private brands. It also owns Jabong, which it acquired from Rocket Internet early this year.

"Fashion as a business for Amazon, is amongst the largest businesses for the online marketplace. We are not obsessed with the competition. Should we obsess and worry that some 'A' player who has bought out another player or should we worry about how fashion is a much bigger play for us. Even though we have the largest selection we are hungry, there are so much more in product and content that we want to bring up," Sirdeshmukh said.

AMAZON FESTIVE SALE TRENDS

• Amazon.in received a billion hits in the first 12 hours of the #GreatIndianFestival
• Paid Prime membership was the highest selling product in Amazon.in’s history
• 1 out of every 3 shipments during Great Indian Festival was a Prime shipment
• Amazon App was the top shopping app on PlayStore and Apple App Store
• Received more unique visitors in half a day than it received last year
• Customers from 90% pin codes across the country ordered at least one item from Amazon.in during the Great Indian Festival
• 5x growth in customer acquisition with 70% of new customers coming from Tier-II and Tier-III geographies

Amazon Fashion was one of the two brands including Amazon.in which was launched together in India by the Jeff Bezos led US based company in India. The company said that compared to last year it has pretty much doubled its selection of products in India with a collection of over 15,000 brands and two million designs. It also is looking to bring international brands sold on its US and European platform to India.

The company is also working on fashion content and apparel specific stores, such as denim store, lingerie store, a sunglasses guide among others. It is trying to increase the engagement time of its customers in the fashion vertical and has automated the way customers exchange apparel on the platform.

"If I look at all the things we have done on the ground, week on week, month on month growth in the fashion business it is scorching. In festive sales itself we grew our business in fashion space 4X," said Sirdeshmukh.