 "Amazon boxes are seen stacked for delivery")
The pilot, being done for the first time in the world in India by Amazon, will allow the Jeff Bezos company to tap consumers who are uncomfortable to buy large value items online. An Amazon trained person will hand hold a customer in deciding the product, a common practice at offline smartphones stores, a business model that e-commerce firms are trying to disrupt.
Amazon India's move comes at a time when it has become aggressive with a $ 3 billion cheque from its parent to take on local rivals Flipkart and Snapdeal. Both the Indian rivals, backed by venture capital firms are struggling to rationalise costs, improve efficiency to achieve profitability being demanded by its investors.
"These are good customer engagement and experience initiatives, but unless they create a significant offline presence that has sufficient breadth and depth of product, these are likely to remain peripheral to a large online marketplace place like Amazon or Flipkart," said Haresh Chawla, partner at India Value Fund Advisors. "Unlike other countries, India's offline retail market is still wide open - but it has it's own challenges that an online player may not want to grapple with."
Amazon in a statement said it is piloting the concept across 40 Vodafone stores across Bengaluru.
The Economic Times reported this first in its Monday edition.
In November last year, Amazon opened its first offline retail store in Seattle (its home town) for books. The move was seen as the online retail giant's gradual move into physical retailing, after launching lockers from where customers could pick up their orders and kiosks from where customers could buy gadgets.
In the US, where there is a high penetration of the Internet and smartphones, there is still a place for offline retail, prompting players such as Amazon to explore opportunities 20 years after it began selling books online. In India, where less than one-fifth of the population owns smartphones, the opportunities for offline retail are much larger.
"In rural India, most of the shopping is done with local retailers, with whom they have relationships through generations," says G Sridhar, founder and chief executive of StoreKing, an assisted commerce player, who is partner for Amazon to reach out to rural customers across eight states including Kerala.
StoreKing has local merchants equipped with tablets, who help rural consumers to choose products online both on its website as well as on Amazon and ensure delivery of these products. "The value of StoreKing assisting a customer is that we reach out to Pin codes that not served by existing e-commerce players. There is also a trust factor of a local merchant ensuring payment and service of products to customers," said Sridhar, who has over 17,000 outlets on its network.
StoreKing is the latest partner in project Udaan of Amazon, which has reached out to local partners in 13 states to tap into customers in tier II and tier III cities. The other partners include
Vakrangee, Smart Buy, Rajasthan Government's eMitra program and ConnectIndia, the firm said in a statement.
