Global e-commerce giant Amazon, which entered the Indian market with Junglee.com in 2012 to provide price comparisons for consumers, has turned the latter into a marketplace.
Consumers can now buy goods from Junglee as well.
The move is expected to heat up competition in the Indian e-commerce segment, which is dominated by Flipkart.
Mahendra Nerurkar, General Manager, Junglee.com, told BusinessLine that Amazon has launched a pilot for Junglee two months ago to understand if it can convert the comparison site into a marketplace.
“The pilot has been successful and we are seeing a strong traction on Junglee. People come here to compare prices and go to another site to make the transaction. Now, we facilitate the same on Junglee itself, which becomes more convenient for consumers.”
The company has launched services such as ‘Buy on Junglee’ and ‘Sell on Junglee’.
Listing feature It has also rolled out a paid listing feature for the sites, through which sellers have to pay charges as per transaction to list them on the site and would allow consumers to buy from any seller on Junglee’s site itself.
Junglee attracts 15 million visits every month and has over 30 million listings across 25 categories, from over 1,700 online shopping sites and 60,000 nearby stores.
According to industry experts, these features make Junglee a marketplace, along with a comparison site, and that this strategy will help Amazon India have an edge over its rivals as over 100,000 offline sellers and over 2,000 sites in the country are listed on Junglee.com. However, players such as Flipkart and Snapdeal have not listed themselves on Junglee.
“The paid sites are increasing by day. We have over 4,000 products on our sites at present. We have also launched a mobile application and revamped the website to create a single place for both sellers and consumers to search, compare, review, buy and sell the products,” Nerurkar said.
Earlier, Junglee was not charging for listings by sellers. Hence, it was not providing any added advantage to Amazon as it used to be a neutral platform that shares the same data with Amazon as it does with other sellers.
Correction
This news report has been modified to correct the number of visits Junglee attracts to 15 million a month, from 50 million.