Amazon India is repositioning itself as a comprehensive business partner rather than just an e-commerce platform, slashing seller fees and introducing artificial intelligence-powered tools ahead of the country's crucial festive shopping season that could determine the year's retail performance.
At the stroke of midnight, live dashboards lit up simultaneously across Amazon India's World Trade Centre headquarters and Flipkart's Outer Ring Road office in Bengaluru. In sprawling "war rooms" at both the companies, executives monitored real-time data streams tracking payment speeds, inventory levels, and delivery logistics as millions of shoppers flooded online platforms.
Amazon India unveiled a dedicated marketplace section highlighting products with reduced tax burdens as the goods and services tax (GST) restructuring took effect on September 22, positioning the ecommerce giant to capitalise on lower consumer prices across electronics, appliances, and other categories. Its rival Flipkart, too, has rolled out its own GST-focused storefront, the GST Bachat Utsav, aimed at helping shoppers maximise benefits from the new tax rates across multiple categories.
'The Indian consumer is moving so quickly and they have so many options.'
Amazon India has witnessed an 84 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) increase in sales of hallmarked gold jewellery and posted a 5-fold spike in demand during the first two days of its ongoing Amazon Great Indian Festival (AGIF) sale event, which started on September 27. This demand is for brands such as Malabar Gold and Diamonds, PN Gadgil Jewellers, Joyalukkas, PC Chandra and KISNA, among others. According to current trends, customers buy fine jewellery starting at Rs 2,000 in the silver category and shell out up to Rs 40,000 for gold and diamond jewellery. In the last year, Amazon has seen more customers opt for 14 Karat purity.
Banks and NBFCs are launching festival offers, including lower loan rates, cashback, EMI schemes and GST-linked benefits to tap rising demand ahead of Diwali
Aseem Chhabra ranks the Best of 2025's films that released in theatres, or went directly to OTT platforms.
Meesho has emerged as the second-largest player by order share in this year's festive sales till now, surpassing Amazon, while Flipkart Group platforms topped the market in both orders and gross merchandise value (GMV), according to according to a report by consultancy firm Redseer. It said Flipkart Group maintained its leadership position with a 62 per cent market share in terms of GMV during the first week of the festive season, followed by Amazon which had 26 per cent share, while the remaining 12 per cent was distributed among other e-commerce players. In terms of order volume, Flipkart Group again leads the market with about 49 per cent share and SoftBank-backed Meesho ranks second with about 21 per cent order share, according to Redseer.
Flipkart claims that over one billion customers visited its platform during the eight-day-long The Big Billion Festival. Amazon's Great Indian Festival 2022, which will go on for a month, is throwing discounts at customers that can hardly be ignored. But some of the stories that are coming out from these sales are not so great.
While war rooms are set up closer to the sales, warlike preparations go into it almost 12 months in advance to ensure that on D-day the firm gives its best to its customers.
'You need the drishti, the experience. I am beginning to see things differently.'
'The World Cup alone is expected to create an additional 100,000 jobs, most of which will comprise gig workers in the delivery space, transportation, hospitality and event management.'
'Building a whole product with the railways was challenging; we had to figure out how to load and unload a train when it stops for only about five minutes at a station.' 'We also helped them understand the revenues this would generate for them.'
Christina Rindiki's all-women team on the India-Myanmar border in Champhai, Mizoram, delivers 300 plus Amazon packets daily. The women handle all aspects of the operation and made around 450 deliveries per day this month alone. This is their story.
E-commerce companies managed to beat the odds by adopting a flexible approach in terms of transforming their business models and leveraging emerging technologies. They had to constantly align their objectives with evolving customer needs. With companies hiring thousands of temporary workers, expanding to smaller cities, and launching new products, e-commerce giants gird up to celebrate the peak festival season without Covid restrictions after a three-year time-out.
Not displaying the mandatory information, including country of origin, on products sold on their platforms in India, draws government's attention.
'The flutters of excitement of a high-school romance, and then how life changes.'
What sold the most this year? Beauty, toys and baby care, sports and fitness, television and large appliances, followed by fashion, says T E Narasimhan.
'I hadn't worked for three-and-a-half years.' 'I felt industry was based on who you knew.' 'I didn't belong to a network.'
Smartphone shipment in India declined by 10 per cent to hit a three-year low of 43 million shipment in the July-September 2022 period, market research firm International Data Corporation said on Monday. The 5G smartphone share reached 36 per cent of total smartphones during the reported quarter with 16 million units at a slightly higher average selling price of $393, about Rs 32,000, apiece compared to $377, about Rs 30,600, in the previous quarter. "India smartphone market declined 10 per cent year-over-year (YoY) shipping 43 million units in July-September 2022.
Flipkart and Myntra, together, post higher sales than Amazon
E-commerce firms Amazon, Flipkart, and others are expected to witness blockbuster festival season sales of around $9 billion this year, surpassing pre-pandemic sales of $5 billion in 2019. The pandemic has accelerated the shift to e-commerce, with more consumers shopping online at a higher frequency than last year, observed analysts. This year's festival sales (gross merchandise value or GMV) are expected to grow 30 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to $4.8 billion during the first week of the season and potentially clock over $9-billion GMV during the whole festival month, revealed consulting firm RedSeer's e-commerce festival season report.
'E-commerce scams are not new, but what s more alarming is the covert cyber warfare the Chinese entities are launching in India on a repeated basis.'
Instead of making the sellers bleed, experts say, e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart have roped in banks to offer discounts to buyers.
Could it be about clout? Given its size and influence, RIL doesn't need the media for that, notes Vanita Kohli-Khandekhar.
Amazon Prime Video has announced a huge number of assorted Web series and movies, and the slate sure looks interesting.
An eight-part crime drama set in the mid-1970s highlighting notorious serial killer and conman Charles Sobhraj's sinister activities around the hippie trail.
Aseem Chhabra lists his favourite Indian films of 2021.
Aseem Chhabra highlights 10 films that moved him, films that may show up in theatres near you.
Google will be able to co-relate data from the first click to the final delivery of product. This kind of knowledge is invaluable, something which even Amazon does not have.
'Never in the history of Indian cinema did we have a distribution system for 240 countries, but we have it now.' 'And if we still keep catering to the B and C-tiers of our country, and not the whole world, then we are really being losers.' 'The visionaries of the industry must pull up their socks and say that now we will create for the world.'
As advertising reaches a cacophonous pitch, as it does every year around this time, brands say they are finding newer and more effective ways to reach their audiences.
A slew of Indian firms, including Flipkart, Byju's and Zomato, is building a path to profitability and diversifying into newer business segments ahead of mega-IPO plans.
Retailer bodies to demand govt action against I-Day sales offers, threaten legal action for breach of FDI rules.
Any concerned citizen ought to start practicing hygiene by washing their hands properly and be aware of the brands that are certified.
'Then, one fine morning, I returned to my first love.' 'All the top directors of the time were waiting for me.' 'In one day, I signed 12 films.' 'Prosenjit Chatterjee was back!'
The big breakthrough in e-commerce came in October when the big three of Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal went into an overdrive to win customers and offered pre-Diwali sales with eye-popping discounts.
RIL is setting up infrastructure for a full-fledged horizontal e-commerce offering - internally called the New Commerce - to simultaneously launch pan-India by October-November.
A West Indian Day celebration, Hurricane Dorian destruction, and the immersion of Lord Ganesha in Mumbai round out this week's best images.
Major players like Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon have, in the last two months, offered discount schemes on specific days, in sync with the festive season in the country.
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