Amazon’s apps witness nearly 500 mn cumulative downloads in India

Amazon is betting big on the Indian market as the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift to e-commerce, and more consumers are shopping online more frequently on the online retailer’s platform. The company said that if downloads from its platforms are combined as ‘AmazonThe .in’ shopping app and the Prime Video app have nearly 500 million downloads, accounting for nearly 75 percent of registered internet users in the country today.

Amazon It counts Walmart-owned Flipkart, Reliance’s JioMart and Tata among its rivals to tap into the burgeoning e-commerce market, which is expected to hit $350bn by 2030 from $45-50bn now.

What Amazon has learned from the COVID-19 crisis is the important role business and e-commerce can play, both for customers, small businesses and the economy. In the last 2 years, Amazon has seen a lot of customers move online, not only in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, but also in smaller towns.

“More than 86 percent of new customers on Amazon.in come from Tier 2 geographies and below,” said Kishore Thota, director of customer experience and marketing for Amazon India. “The number of customers who return to the Amazon app to meet their various needs has seen high double-digit growth.”

Thota said that the diverse needs of hundreds of millions of Bharat customers, including shopping, paying bills, sending money, buying plane tickets, ordering food in restaurants, medicines in pharmacies, gaming and access to music and videos from Premium or Mini TV, are being fulfilled on the Amazon.in app and website.

Customers prefer the shopping experience in a language of their choice and convenience. In 2021, more than 5 million customers shopped in Indian languages ​​on the platform and more than 90 percent of these customers are from Tier 2 cities and below.

“Amazon’s goal is to reach Bharat (Tier 2 and 3 cities and rural areas of India), that is, to reach all customers in India, wherever they are, satisfy their needs and make them happy with the overall experience. said Tota. “A significant number of customers have yet to embrace online shopping.”

Millions of customers are also viewing Amazon’s miniTV offering within the shopping app that provides a subscription-free entertainment service with a curated and diverse offering of content from leading and emerging digital content creators.

Amazon has been able to achieve success in its offerings as it “works backwards” from the customer. It focuses on being relevant in the daily lives of clients through various avenues. Instead of thinking about a technology or a paradigm, the company focuses on building something that is usable and has been doing so since its inception in India.

“If you look at the ‘Amazon.in’ shopping app, when Amazon started in India 8 years ago, the app was primarily designed to buy products,” Thota said. “But customer needs have evolved with the emergence of various use cases. To simplify the customer experience considering the various touch points in the app, Amazon has gradually revised the appearance of the app.

Today, customers can experience a rich user interface with access to all touchpoints in a single tab. This makes it easier for customers to navigate the Amazon shopping app.

The firm has also been working on introducing new customer experiences through interactive avenues such as video, voice and regional language. The company said it listened to customers and their requirements and was the first to introduce the regional language shopping experience in Hindi. Today, Amazon has expanded it further with the addition of other languages, including Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, and Bengali.

To help customers shop, Amazon has also been working on generating unique video content to enhance product pages and help customers evaluate the product offered. This simplifies your purchase decision. Today, millions of Amazon customers engage with video content on product pages, resulting in a streamlined shopping experience and higher conversions.

The firm also believes that voice is the most natural way for humans to interact with each other. The voice experience on Amazon’s India platform solves several challenges for customers, such as typing product details into the search bar, helping navigate to different sections of the app, and reducing the number of steps in the process. Last year, Amazon expanded its voice offerings with the launch of the Hindi voice shopping experience. Customers can search for products, track their orders, navigate to various touchpoints on the company’s Android app, add items to the cart using their voice in Hindi or English.

Despite the growing penetration of smartphones and the Internet across the country, there are several regions where people still use feature phones. Even when these customers have a smartphone, they primarily use it to make video calls or watch content. These are customers who have not shopped online due to various barriers. While Amazon has addressed some of this by launching the shopping experience in the regional language, there are other barriers as well, such as lack of internet access. To address this gap, the company had already launched Amazon Easy, an assisted shopping experience present primarily in Tier 2 markets and below. Over the past six years, the company has established a network of nearly 100,000 Amazon Easy stores across the country.

“Amazon continues to experiment with new ways to simplify the shopping experience,” said Thota.

A case in point is Amazon’s initial steps into the live commerce space, where it worked with key influencers to run live streams during Prime Day, Raksha Bandhan, and The Great Indian Festival (GIF) last year to engage with the target audiences. During GIF last year, for example, Amazon ran daily “Get Ready for Diwali” livestreams from 8 to 9 p.m., where influencers demonstrated products and deals in the beauty, fashion and home decor categories. Story Signal