Rural India driving Amazon sales this time

Hyderabad: With festive season kicking in, e-commerce major Amazon is confident of clocking better sales this time despite talk of economic slowdown in the country, according to Arun Sirdeshmukh, Business Head-Fashion, Amazon India.

In an exclusive chat with The Hans India, Sirdeshmukh maintained that online retail were on the rise and Amazon had not been impacted by economic slowdown so far.

Electronics is considered to be the largest contributor of online retail sales in India, with a share of more than 45 percent, followed by apparel with over 25 percent.

"Across the world, fashion is the largest segment of ecommerce, but here, if 100 units are bought in a day, the share of eCommerce for sales of fashion related products would be less than 10 percent. However, in the next five years or so, this might increase to over 10 percent," he said.

Further, Sirdeshmukh said that Amazon.in will see higher growth as more and more customers from rural India are taking to ecommerce.

"We are equipping ourselves for increasing demand we see in the coming years. Compared to last year, Amazon.in has increased onboarding of sellers, inventory, fulfillment centres, seller flex, and payment options including introducing EMI option for fashion buyers. Under fashion, Amazon.in is carrying more than 50 percent of selection or individual items compared to last year," he added.

In the last one year, Amazon India has added 25,000 new sellers from across India; It currently has five lakh sellers across verticals on the platform. Of them, more than 18,500 sellers are from Telangana and over 10,000 sellers from Andhra Pradesh.

And, in the category of fashion, Amazon has 35,000 brands and 1,000 popular brands. It roped in over two lakh sellers in this category.

Coming to the six-day Amazon.in's Great Indian Festival, the ecommerce major says 88 percent of the new customers are from small towns, a five times growth in customers from non-metro and Tier 2 and 3 cities. Besides, Amazon Fashion saw a five times growth, led by shoes with six times increase followed by apparel at four times. It sold more than one million units within 24 hours of the sale going live.

Amazon Fashion has 80 to 100 sub-categories such as bags, apparel, shoes etc., and a total of 500 categories under their four major businesses. In India, Amazon.in has 47 large fulfillment centres, the largest being in Hyderabad and 5,000 seller flex modes.