Amazon steals a march on Flipkart with seller count, product range

In the race to dominate the Indian e-commerce market, Amazon.in has established a lead over arch rival Flipkart by more than doubling its seller count and product range over the past 12 months. The e-commerce Goliath will continue to grow both its seller base and product selection until such time that “selling on Amazon becomes synonymous with selling in India,” said a top executive.

With 60,000 sellers on its marketplace last December, Amazon has grown the base to 1,40,000, with more to be on-boarded over the next two weeks. Despite its publicly stated aim to acquire 1,00,000 sellers by the end of December 2015, Flipkart has managed to bring in the same number of sellers only now.

Amazon has grown its product selection from 40 million in December 2015 to 95 million now, with its growing base of sellers adding an average of 1,60,000 products every day, surpassing Flipkart’s 80 million products. Amazon’s Global Selling Programme, launched in May 2016, has grown from 5,000 to 18,000 Indian sellers, who sell their wares to a global audience across nine of Amazon’s marketplaces — the US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the UK and Mexico.

“We have seen 160 per cent year-on-year growth in the domestic seller base and 150 per cent YoY growth in product selection on Amazon.in,” Gopal Pillai, Director and General Manager – Seller Services, Amazon India, told BusinessLine . “We have more than tripled the number of sellers on our Global Selling Programme, who have listed 25 million products reaching 300 million customers.”

He said the endeavour will be to grow both seller base and product selection to be able to cater to everything a customer from any part of India is looking for to shop online.

Amazon’s success in on-boarding sellers can be largely attributed to the extension of its successful Chai Cart initiative with the launch of Amazon Tatkal in February this year, which helps small and medium businesses get online and sell on Amazon.in in under 60 minutes.

“Tatkal is a specially designed studio-on-wheels offering a suite of launch services including registration, imaging/cataloguing services, as well as seller-training programmes, to ease their transition into online selling. Tatkal has traversed 50,000 km covering 120 cities across India,” said Pillai.

Over 50 per cent of sellers on Amazon.in are from Tier II and below cities, and 90 per cent of Amazon.in’s sellers use its logistics and fulfilment services — Amazon Easy Ship and FBA (Fulfilment by Amzon).

The e-tailer has invested heavily in establishing a ‘Seller University’ which has 700 videos in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada for sellers; building an army of 1,900 Amazon trained e-commerce specialists and 300 service providers in 70 cities to help sellers sign up and list on Amazon.in. Amazon packs a punch with the largest storage capacity and warehouse infrastructure for e-commerce sellers in India with 27 ‘Fulfilment Centres’ in 10 States with a combined storage space of 7.5 million cubic feet.

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