Electronics brand BPL makes the move — to Amazon

Amazon.in has snared home-grown electronics brand BPL Ltd from Flipkart ahead of its major sale season.

BPL Ltd, which last year revived its portfolio of electronics’ brands including television sets coming on board Flipkart's online platform, has now shifted its allegiance to amazon.in.

All its products will now be exclusively sold on amazon.in platform.

“We learned a lot when we were with Flipkart. Now the journey continues with Amazon.in. It has been a great experience from being an offline brand to shift to the online platform," BPL Ltd's CMD, Ajith Nambiar, told BusinessLine .

He said BPL is planning to add several more products and bundle with those of Amazon.

For example, voice recognition for TV sets could be one of them.

Alexa, an intelligent personal assistant, could be one of the software products bundled along with some of the BPL products.

“We are thrilled to be the partner of choice for one of the most admired Indian brands BPL. We are witnessing huge customer demand for appliances such as ACs, TVs and washing machines. We are committed to our partnership with BPL and will work together with the aim to give customers unique products combined with a delightful online shopping experience," said Manish Tiwary, Vice-President, Category Management, Amazon India.

Manmohan Ganesh, head, corporate strategy for BPL, said to get their products bundled with Prime Video and Netflix will open up exciting possibilities for both Amazon as well as for BPL.

After onboarding Flipkart, BPL Ltd's products saw a major revival and according to Nambiar, the total sale consisted about 15 per cent of total sales of electronics products on the e-commerce giant.

“Our alliance with Flipkart was hardly for a year. It was a good experience. It is just that we got presented with a much bigger platform for a wider range of products. Amazon is very confident with the entire range of appliance products. There are big values in partnering with BPL. It is the first exclusive brand not just for TV but the entire range," he pointed out.

Ganesh said BPL was clear right from the day it went on the e-commerce platform not to make it a discount brand. He said it makes sense to work with one exclusive partner. The pricing of BPL products is quite competitive. For example, the price range of TV sets is between ₹9,000 and ₹40,000. The rest are priced competitively.

Most of the sales for BPL products came from tier I and III cities when it was on Flipkart’s platform.

Even as BPL plans to expand its range of products, some of those will be manufactured in third party plants.

The company has already expanded its product range to a certain extent by launching air-purifiers and air-conditioners. It plans to get into other products soon.

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