Amazon India Goes Live with Books and Movies. What’s Next?

Amazon launched their Indian Operations this month and went live with http://www.amazon.in/, sending excitement among Indian buyers and jitters among Indian E-commerce companies. Indian buyers are rejoicing Amazon’s entry into already competitive Indian e-commerce marketplace as Amazon have deep pockets and discounts will start flowing soon.

Why Books and Movies?

Its interesting to see that Amazon simply launched with Books and Movies as Books have always been a strength for Amazon in International Markets and they are making sure to play by their strengths. Along with Kindle, Books category makes a lot more sense for them and its a great way to start with a really big catalogue right away. Smart move Indeed! And by giving away FREE e-books every fortnight, they are making sure that bargain hungry Indian crowd get a taste of e-books and what Kindle device is all about. I am sure this promotion would help them once they start selling Kindle aggressively in India.

Coming Soon: Mobiles and Cameras

What really impressed me was their way of announcing their next categories to be launched which would have surely sent jitters to many e-commerce companies. They have nicely tucked it away in their navigation bar, keeping everyone on their toes and keep the excitement going. Such a simplistic design to keep your visitors aware and keep your competitors on their toes. No coming soon flashy banners!! But everyone now knows what to expect next?

Would Discounts really flow?

With Flipkart running Big Offers Day and Mobiles and Cameras websites like Tradus offering frequent  10% Off coupon codes on very low margins categories like Mobiles and Cameras, It would be very interesting to watch how Amazon launches this segment. Would they get into price game from Day 1? Or would they focus on building Customer experience and offering top quality Service? I would not be surprised to see deep discounts being offered when they launch the Mobiles and Cameras section to get the initial traction. They have already went live with Affiliate Program very soon, which clearly indicates that they are definitely going to rely on Deals and Coupons website to push those bargains to the end users.

Tapping their Organic Traffic

As one would have expected, Amazon.in is now listed on Junglee too and Any Indian visitor going to amazon.com gets a nice little alert saying “Shopping from India? Visit Amazon.in” Such a neat little way to tap to the organic traffic amazon.com drives from India. It speaks volume about the Brand Amazon. Everything is well planned out while giving the very best user experience too.

It’s indeed refreshing to see Amazon coming to India and its even more refreshing to see that they have started to do all the small things right too… They seem to have delivered books quite quickly and I believe this competition will be very healthy to the Indian e-Commerce system.