Amazon’s massive e-retailing business has finally flown into India on wings of the website called Junglee.com, which it bought 14 years ago.
According to the company, the new website will offer more than 10 million products from over 14,000 Indian and global brands. It will be possible for shoppers to buy online and offline from Indian retailers, including Homeshop18, Hidesign, Gitanjali, The Bombay Store, Fabindia, Bata India Ltd. and Reebok. The new website will offer a wide range of product categories, from phones and cameras to toys and games, baby products, electronics and jewellery, according to the company.
Amit Agarwal, vice president at Amazon.com, said in the announcement, “We are excited to give customers in India a single online starting point where they can shop a wide selection of products sold by local and global retailers, and make informed purchasing decisions.”
Established players in Indian’s online retail market, Flipkart or eBay do not have much to worry from the Amazon foray. At least in the initial stages, Junglee.com is not going to compete with established e-commerce sites like Flipkart or eBay. Rather it is being positioned as an online shopping service that will help customers discover products from other websites (including Amazon.com). When users select or choose to buy a product from Junglee.com, they will be redirected to the seller’s website.
Despite low Internet penetration, India’s e-commerce market has recently shown encouraging signs. This is attracting major international players like Amazon. Analysts put the size of India’s e-commerce retail market at about $10 billion.
