We expect Prime Day 2024 to be biggest ever, says Amazon executive

E-commerce major Amazon is expecting the upcoming eighth iteration of its annual Prime Day sale event in India, on July 20-21, to be its biggest ever, a senior executive at the firm said on Monday.

Last year, Amazon witnessed as many as 22,190 orders in a single minute "at its peak," its highest-ever sales figure for a Prime Day event.

"Every Prime Day is expected to be bigger than the last...E-commerce adoption and people's willingness to shop online continues to scale. The importance and expectation of speed have increased tremendously in this market. These are trends that are serving us well but also creating great opportunities for us to be able to serve customers better," Akshay Sahi, Head of Amazon Prime, Delivery and Returns Experience, India and emerging markets, told Business Standard.

According to Sahi, Amazon has scaled up the event across three key pillars of "great deals, new launches and blockbuster entertainment."

To cater to the growing number of buyers and to be able to fulfil delivery either on the first day or the next, Amazon is also beefing up its delivery network. To prepare for the anticipated uptick in demand, Sahi said that Amazon is scaling up its delivery network to improve the speed of deliveries and making improvements in the user experience on its app.

"This year, 50 per cent of Prime members have recieved their orders the same day and next day. We have expanded our coverage massively and we now deliver to all pincodes in the country. In fact, 97 per cent of pincodes get two-day deliveries or faster," Sahi said.

“We are currently operating our fulfilment centres in over 15 states, and have sortation centres in over 19 states. We have 1,950 of our own delivery stations and work with 28,000 more entrepreneurs for last mile deliveries. We now have 43 million cubic feet of space in which we can manage inventory, which creates a huge inbound capacity that can move things faster,” Sahi said.

The e-commerce major started Prime Day in India in 2017 with 100 product launches. The event was scaled up to as many as 30,000 new launches in 2022, which increased to over 45,000 such launches last year.

Amazon will launch thousands of new products from over 450 brands, across categories like electronics, fashion and beauty, groceries, Amazon devices, home and kitchen products, and furniture, among others, at discounted rates.

These brands include the likes of Intel, OnePlus, Samsung, Bajaj, Sony, Motorola, Boat, HP, American Tourister, Lapo, Chetak, Borosil, Riversoft, Yale, Adidas, Crocs, Mamaearth, and HUL, among others.

Amazon said it will continue to support small and medium businesses (SMBs) and offer Prime members products from lakhs of sellers, manufacturers, start-ups and brands, women entrepreneurs, artisans, weavers, and local shops. This Prime Day, over 3,200 of the new products will come from this segment, up from 2,000 a year ago.

The SMBs will launch these products under Amazon programmes like Launchpad, Karigar, Saheli, and local shops at heavy discounts.

The company usually witnesses an uptick in memberships for Amazon Prime - its subscription programme, ahead of Prime Day. Sahi expects a similar outcome this year as well.

Amazon Prime is a subscription membership that offers premium services to its customers. In India, Prime members get free one-day delivery on over 4,000,000 products, unlimited 5 per cent cashback on all purchases using their co-branded ICICI credit card, among other benefits.

Although Sahi did not share the total number of Prime users in India, the firm has over 200 million users across 25 countries globally.

On the occasion, the company’s streaming service Prime Video will also be announcing a line-up of 14 original series and movies across five languages. These include the award-winning mega series Mirzapur Season 3 (Hindi) and the recently released global sensation The Boys Season 4 (English), Amazon said.