 "Sellers saw 8-10x growth during festive season at Amazon platform")
During the current season Amazon reported 250 cent growth in sellers and customers traffic. The company now plans to double its seller related activities and initiatives in Indian market to consolidate its position in the country.
Gopal Pillai, Director - Seller Services at Amazon India, said that the company has launched several seller-focussed initiatives this year and created infrastructure to support the growth, especially to tap the Indian small and medium businesses.
While reports stated that Amazon India has invested over Rs 1,200 crore to set up infrastructures, Pillai declined to comment, adding that the company has now created around five million cubic storage capacity, which he claims is the largest by any e-commerce player in the country and 21 fulfilment centres (automated warehouses), of which 10 were started in 2015 alone.
On festival sales, which started on October 13, Pillai said so far the company has seen a growth of around 250% growth in sellers and customers traffic. Currently Amazon has around 1 lakh sellers, of which 5,000 sells products outside India, a 250% growth.
During the month of September alone, around 24,000 sellers registered with Amazon, he claims.
He said, the growth has been 4 times more than that during last Diwali and first day sale of the current festival season has surpassed all the past records.
The top 3 segments continue to be electronics, fashion and FMCG products, said Pillai, adding that 65% of the orders are coming from tier II and III cities, while 50% of the sellers are from tier II and III cities and 70% of the traffic is from mobile and mobile apps.
He claimed during the festive season sellers on Amazon have seen 8-10 times more growth in sales.
For instance a Mumbai based seller used to sell four lakh electronic products a day and today he sells around 60 lakh products. A watch seller from Chennai sold around 30,000 watches in five days.
While declining to share any future investments and growth targets, Pillai said for Amazon India is fastest growing market and the company would continue to invest. Amazon has committed over $2 billion investment in India.
The e-commerce giant listed around 30 million products and has around one million product at the warehouses at a given point of time, which it claims is the the largest.
New initiatives
Amazon has taken up new initiatives for better engagement and bring more sellers on board.
These includes Seller University, where Amazon coaches sellers through webinars on how to sell online in various steps. The programmes is in five languages.
Fleet-on-streets, another initiative where Amazon sends its employees and freelancers on to the doorsteps of these sellers to make them aware about usage of mobile phones, apps to sell goods online and help them conduct a photo-shoot or how to set up a store online.
Seller Flex programme replicates Amazon warehousing practices, These are small warehouses, owned by the sellers but powered/ managed by Amazon.
Sellers would be allowed to have more control over the inventory and helps them faster delivery and cut down on shipping costs. So far 11 such warehouses across six cities were converted and another four are in pipeline.
