Amazon Preps To Hold Its Prime Day Event Later Next Month In India

Ecommerce major Amazon is planning to host its flagship sale event Prime Day later next month amid slow growth of shopping on ecommerce platforms.

For Amazon, Prime Day has been one of its crucial events and it is typically held in July to boost sales. Last year, Amazon held Prime Day sales on July 23-24 in India. Unlike its other events, Prime Day is hosted for Amazon’s prime members only.

To prepare for the event, Amazon executives have asked sellers and brands to keep enough inventory for the sale later next month, ET reported.

According to one of the sellers quoted in the report, the ecommerce platform has started placing orders for upcoming Prime Day events. Although Amazon has not yet announced any date formally, it will likely be in the second half of July.

“We are finalisng the terms and keeping the products in warehouses,” the seller said.

On the other hand, Amazon has started testing Prime Day-related updates on its platform internally.

It is to be noted that Amazon recently announced that it would host the annual Prime Day shopping event on July 11-12 in other global markets such as the US, the UK, among others.

Amazon recently hiked the price of Prime membership in India. Earlier, the monthly subscription price of Amazon Prime was INR 179 per month, which has been hiked by more than INR 100 with the current price being at INR 299. Though the quarterly plan has also been hiked to INR 599 from INR 459, the annual plan, which is INR 1,499 remains unchanged.

According to a report by logistics startup Shiprocket, Amazon, which started its journey in India with only 100 sellers, sells more than 4,000 products per minute. It offers 168 Mn products to customers.

Amazon India’s marketplace business Amazon Seller Services reported a 23% year-on-year (YoY) decline in loss to INR 3,649.2 Cr in the financial year 2021-22 (FY22). Amazon Seller Services’ operating revenue grew over 32% to INR 21,462 Cr in FY22 from INR 16,200.3 Cr in FY21.

For the first time since 2014, Amazon’s India operations didn’t find a mention in the company’s earnings call and release for the first quarter ended March 31, 2023.

The move raised questions as Amazon has been regularly highlighting the Indian ecommerce market while announcing its quarterly results.

However, Amazon said that its business in emerging countries including India, Brazil, and the Middle East would take some time to become profitable during its earnings call for the preceding Q4 2022 quarter.