Amazon launches Prime Reading in India, offers ebooks at no additional cost

Amazon is offering customers access to best-selling e-books at no additional cost as it seeks to boost its Prime loyalty programme in India and lock customers into its ecosystem.

Prime Reading will supplement the e-commerce giant’s already popular video and music streaming offerings in the country. This is seen as part of Amazon’s strategy to offer content to get customers to subscribe to its Rs 999 annual Prime membership programme.

“Prime Reading is now available to members on their Kindle E-readers and the free Kindle app. It is yet another offering for Prime members to help make their everyday life better and more fun,” said Akshay Sahi, director and head of Prime at Amazon India.

Popular e-book titles including bestsellers like Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, One Indian Girl, and Immortals of Meluha will be a part of the Amazon Prime reading platform. Amazon Prime will continue to offer free and fast shipping, early access to deals and much more.

Even globally, Prime is seen as one of Amazon’s biggest weapons against rivals, while also helping the company take on OTT service providers such as Netflix, Spotify and Apple Music. While the company doesn’t reveal its base of Prime members, the company is estimated to have had 10 million Indian subscribers in April this year.

Amazon has been steadily growing the amount of India-specific content to woo customers in the country, with both original shows as well as partnerships with local film and music companies. Last year, the company had said it would invest $300 million to grow its base of content specifically for India, over a period of the next few years.

 

Gauging the success of Amazon Prime in the last two years, even rival Flipkart has launched its own loyalty programme dubbed Flipkart Plus. Unlike Amazon’s offering, Flipkart Plus is a no-cost membership, offering benefits to customers who shopped more frequently on its platform.

However, Flipkart lacks the content pull that Amazon has so well capitalised on to grow its base of paying subscribers in India. Livemint reported last week that Flipkart was in talks with Star-owned video streaming service Hotstar to make an investment in the firm. Hotstar is currently the largest video streaming service in the country.