Amazon India Banks On Live Commerce To Drive Engagement & Sales

Stepping up the heat against its competitor Flipkart, ecommerce major Amazon has launched its live commerce feature called Amazon Live in India.

The service was rolled out on September 30th at the sidelines of the much touted The Great Indian Festival 2022 sale. As part of this, Amazon has onboarded more than 150 content creators who will host livestream and showcase products in between. 

The ecommerce giant will run 15 live streams a day from 10 am to 1 am, in a bid to woo more users and to spur engagement across the app.

“The launch comes at an opportune time for customers seeking to shop during the ongoing Amazon Great Indian Festival. Through Amazon Live, Amazon India aims to connect the influencers with customers at scale, enabling them to make informed purchases,” said Amazon India’s director of customer experience and marketing Kishore Thota.

The US-based ecommerce major has also onboarded celebrities such as actor Parineeti Chopra and badminton player PV Sindhu to host live streams on the platform, who would get get a cut for each sale made, a TechCrunch report added. 

The ecommerce giant is banking on the stardom of these celebrities to drive traffic to the websites and increase the quantum of sales.

This comes at a time when a host of players have forayed into the space to spur revenues. In July, streaming platform YouTube announced that it would pilot live shopping features for viewers in the United States, India and Brazil.

Earlier this year, Walmart-backed commerce platform Flipkart also roped in a host of content creators to debut its live commerce features. Its fashion and lifestyle ecommerce arm Myntra also launched its live-commerce feature M-live in November last year.

Meanwhile, Glance-owned video sharing platform Roposo had, last year, also announced its entry into the space with its creator-led ecommerce tryst. In April, social commerce unicorn Meesho also said that it plans to launch a live commerce vertical focus by the end of the year to attract more and spur engagement.

Interestingly, Amazon’s announcement comes months after it acquired social commerce startup GlowRoad in an all-cash deal. 

Amazon Ramps Up India Focus

Amazon has introduced multiple language support to entice the country’s vernacular user base. Beginning with Hindi, the platform has introduced six other Indian languages namely Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu to improve its regional language shopping experience. 

Besides, Amazon also claims that more than 70% of sales happening via regional languages emerge from Tier- II cities and below, as of September 2022. Not just this, the company also claims that more than 2 Mn customers shopped at its Amazon Easy stores and availed assisted shopping on Amazon.in.

At Amazon Easy stores, customers can place an order on the ecommerce website with guided assistance from the store staff and, accordingly, pick the order up from the store itself or get it delivered at their homes.

Amazon claims to have set up a network of close to 1 Lakh Amazon Easy stores across the country in the past six years. 

“Today, over 90% of our customers and more than 86% of our new customers are from Tier-II and Tier-III cities and towns. We will continue to focus on bringing new features and investing in innovations to make their shopping experience enjoyable and fulfilling,” added Thota.

Redseer partner Ujjwal Chaudhry recently told Inc42 that average user spend during the first four days of the online festive sales remained stagnant at INR 5,200 per shopper in 2022, down 30% compared to the pre-Covid levels of 2019.

Compounding matters for these players appear to be rising inflation and customers opting for low-ticket items such as fashion and home decor. Rising interest rates and overall gloomy market conditions that have forced users to go the route of savings rather than splurging online. 

The biggest issue plaguing the ecommerce major in India appears to be mounting losses. Amazon Seller Services’ narrowed losses by 23% on a yearly basis to INR 3,649.2 Cr in the financial year 2021-22 (FY22). Operating revenue too saw an uptick, growing more than 32% YoY to INR 21,462 Cr in FY22.

Rising competition and ever-present flash sales have also dampened the mood for the space which used to be much sought after for discounts. With the space continuing to evolve and with ecommerce majors hungry for the big chunk of Indians coming online, the space continues to see growing competition and better deals for users.

According to an Inc42 report, India’s burgeoning ecommerce market is projected to soar to $400 Bn by 2030.