Amazon Launches Gift Card Store, Snapdeal Introduces Hotel & Catering Category

The race to lead eCommerce in India is the new game which every retailer is trying to lead aggressively. The recent funding of Flipkart and Amazon investing over $2Bn in Indian operations has made other retailers to pick up new ways to lead against others.

All major players are trying to expand in all sorts be it a category expansion or other services. Recently Amazon has added gift and Snapdeal is also expanding in hotel and catering category.

Amazon.in launches the multi-brand Gift Cards Store   

Moving further on its trend of adding new categories every month. Amazon has recently launched Gift Cards Store, offering a simple, easy and convenient option to buy Gift Cards from over 70 brands across a wide range of products & services from sports gear to clothing & accessories; from restaurants to spa & wellness services and everything in between.

Last month, Amazon.in had launched personalized, customized and multi-lingual Amazon.in Gift Cards enabling the recipients to shop for gifts of their choice from a selection of over 1.5cr products (excluding ebooks)

Srinivas Rao, General Manager Payments, Amazon India, said,“We are very excited with the response that we have received for the Amazon.in Gift Cards in the past few weeks post their launch. The launch of the Gifts Cards Store is a step further in providing an exciting opportunity for our customers to select interesting, unique gifts at their convenience and make the process of gifting and shopping easy, convenient and enjoyable.”

Customers can buy Gift Cards from over 70+ brands that include Pantaloons, Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, Domino’s Pizza, Café Coffee Day, E-Zone, Nike, Landmark Stores, Spencer’s, Titan, O2 Spa, YLG Beauty Salon, Lakme Salon, etc.

Though Cash on Delivery is not valid for this category. These cards can be redeemed only in the respective brand stores.

Recently Amazon has also added pet products on the website.

Snapdeal launches hotel and catering category

Snapdeal has recently launched hotel and catering category on its site to target small enterprise customers. The service is aimed at small restaurants and catering businesses.
The online retailer has also started retailing products like baking and pizza supplies, bar accessories, heavy gauge cutlery glassware and professional knives.

“In future we also plan to integrate a whole range of hotel linen (mattresses, pillows, bed linen & bath linen) into the category and thereby meet all the needs of a hotel/restaurant”, said Tony Navin, senior vice president (electronics & home) at Snapdeal.

The service is primarily aimed at businesses, but individual customers too can purchase the products.