At a time, when the American retail giant Walmart is making entry into Indian e-retail segment through stake acquisition in Flipkart, another US e-retail giant Amazon is mounting its efforts to tap the latent potential in the rural and semi-urban users through its paid service under Amazon Prime.

What will drive the growth of Amazon Prime in the upcountry locations is the rising aspirations of users from small towns, increased capacity to spend, easy access to exclusive launches of new products and faster delivery even in remote locations.

"Although there is no remarkable difference in the order pattern of users in different geographies. But there is an indicative difference between the orders placed by users in rural areas and that in the metros. Accessibility to aspirational products such as from the categories of fashion, beauty and smartphones drive the demand from small towns, while products of daily necessities such as groceries prevalent in metros for convenience reasons," said Akshay Sahi, Director & Head of Amazon Prime India.

According to him, Amazon gets 30 per cent of its total shopping orders from Prime category, which it aims to increase significantly as and how its Prime member base further widens to the small towns.

"Our target is to bring all our existing users on Prime as soon as possible," Sahi said here.

For Amazon India, Ahmedabad has the most number of Prime members beyond India's top metros.

Hinting towards the growing trend of small-town users getting on-board Amazon Prime, Sahi further said, "Gujarat features in top 10 states for Amazon Prime Membership in India. Apart from larger cities in the State, customers from other towns such as Amreli, Dahod, Himmatnagar, Patan, Anand and Mehsana are using Prime membership for popular categories of smartphones, fashion and beauty."

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