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 at a higher frequency on the online retailer’s platform. The company said if one combines the downloads of its platforms such as 'Amazon.in' shopping app and Prime Video app, there are close to 500 million downloads, which is almost 75 per cent of the registered internet users in the country today.

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

What Amazon has learned from the Covid-19 crisis is how important a role the company and e-commerce can play – for customers as well as for small businesses and the economy. In the last 2 years, Amazon has seen a lot of customers move online, not just in tier-1 and tier-2  cities but also in smaller towns.

“More than 86 per cent of the new customers on Amazon.in are coming from tier 2 and below geographies,” said Kishore Thota, director, customer experience and marketing, Amazon India. “The number of customers revisiting the Amazon app to fulfil their various needs has seen a high double-digit growth.”

Thota said hundreds of millions of Bharat’s customers’ various needs including shopping, paying bills, sending money, buying flight tickets, ordering food from restaurants, medicines from pharmacies, playing games and accessing prime music and video or Mini TV, are being fulfilled on the Amazon.in app and website.

Customers are preferring the experience of shopping 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 per cent of these customers are from tier 2 and below cities. 

“Amazon’s objective is to reach Bharat (tier 2 and tier 3 cities and rural India)– that is to reach every customer in India, wherever they may be and fulfil their needs and make them content with the overall experience,” said Thota. “A significant number of customers are yet to embrace online shopping.”

Millions of customers are also watching Amazon’s miniTV offering within the shopping app that provides a subscription-free entertainment service with a curated and diverse content offering by 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 customers' daily lives across various avenues. Rather than thinking about a technology or a paradigm, the company is focused on building something that is usable and has been doing it since its inception in India.

“If one looks at the 'Amazon.in' shopping app, when Amazon started in India 8 years ago, the app was primarily designed for just shopping for products,” said Thota. “But customer needs have evolved with several use cases emerging. To simplify the experience for the customer considering the several touchpoints in the app, Amazon has overhauled the look and feel of the app gradually.”

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

The firm has also been working on introducing newer customer experiences across interactive avenues like videos, voice and regional language. The company said it listened to customers and their requirements and was the first to introduce 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 to help customers evaluate the product offered. This simplifies their purchase decision. Today, millions of Amazon customers are engaging with the video content in the product pages resulting in a simplified shopping experience and increased conversions.

The firm also believes that voice is the most natural way for humans to interact with each other. Voice experience on Amazon’s India platform solves several customer challenges like typing product details in search bar, helps in navigating to different sections of the app and reduces the number of steps in the process. Last year, Amazon expanded its voice offering with the launch of voice shopping experience in Hindi. Customers are able to 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.

In spite of 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 use it primarily for video calling or watching content. These are customers who haven’t shopped online due to various barriers. While Amazon has addressed a part of it through the launch of the regional language shopping experience, there are other barriers too like lack of access to the internet.  To address this gap, the company had already launched Amazon Easy – an assisted shopping experience primarily present in tier 2 and below markets. Over the last six years, the firm has set up a network of close to 100,000 Amazon Easy stores across the country.

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

A case in point is Amazon’s initial steps in 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 audience. During GIF last year for example, Amazon ran daily “Get Ready for Diwali” live streams from 8 to 9 pm where influencers demonstrated products and offers in beauty, fashion, and home decor categories.