Flipkart Plus sees robust growth, reaches 20 million customer base

Around 30% of monthly active customers on Flipkart are now Plus members. Today, Flipkart issues over 1 billion SuperCoins a month, where customers avail various benefits

E-commerce giant Flipkart has crossed a new milestone in its ‘Flipkart Plus’ programme, which is a reward-based loyalty programme. With over 20 million users, Flipkart Plus has become one of the most successful loyalty programmes in India today. Around 30 per cent of monthly active customers on Flipkart are now Plus members. The loyalty programme has achieved more than 100 per cent year-on-year growth.

Flipkart Plus is an earned loyalty program, with no subscription fee, and is designed to delight a very diverse set of Flipkart customers. Benefits include access to special marketplace launch previews, availing free and fast delivery. The other benefits include getting priority customer support, gaining unique Flipkart Pay Later options and curated benefits from ecosystem partners (across travel, OTT, F&B, lifestyle, and health and fitness). In turn, the programme has driven significant engagement among Flipkart users. Plus members on average transact 5X more and have 7X higher spends compared to the rest of the shopper base.

“At Flipkart, we have consistently innovated to make e-commerce more inclusive and democratise access for all,” said Prakash Sikaria, senior vice president, growth and monetisation at Flipkart. “Our loyalty programme ‘Flipkart Plus’ was created with this vision to nurture customer relationships and deliver increased value to them.”

Shoppers on Flipkart earn additional rewards in the form of ‘SuperCoins’. Today, Flipkart issues more than 1 billion SuperCoins per month. SuperCoins can be used to avail benefits across an array of offerings. After establishing the programme last year, throughout 2021, Flipkart has been working on taking SuperCoins to a larger ecosystem. The launch of SuperCoin Pay and SuperCoin Exchange earlier this year was a step in this direction.

“Our research shows that for Indians, shopping is an emotional decision,” said Sikaria. “Rewarding shopping unconditionally invokes a positive emotional bond with the brand.

This was a key insight that led to the creation of the Flipkart Plus programme. This phenomenon is more pronounced in heartland cities across Tier 2+ regions (‘Bharat’) in India. “Today, 75 per cent of our Flipkart Plus members come from a base that has not been part of any loyalty program, credit card, reward program before,” said Sikaria.

The rewards program was externalized with 5000 partner stores in late 2020, with SuperCoin Pay and SuperCoin Exchange. This enabled customers to earn and redeem rewards across partner platforms. All benefits are consolidated under a single rewards program that is easily accessible on the Flipkart app.

Rival company Amazon also runs Amazon Prime in India, which is a subscription membership that offers customers premium services for a yearly or monthly fee. In July this year, Amazon witnessed the biggest response for its flagship event Prime Day this year in India. Prime Day 2021 marked the most Small-Medium Businesses (SMBs) selling on Amazon.in ever, as they saw an overwhelming response from Prime members.

The customers from over 96 per cent pincodes of India placed orders. The month leading up to Prime Day became Prime Video’s best ever viewership period. Also there were the highest number of listeners for Prime Music.

During lead up and on Prime Day, Prime members shopped from 126,003 sellers including artisans, weavers, women entrepreneurs, start-ups and brands, local offline neighbourhood stores. This included sellers from all over India including those from tier 2-3-4 cities like Barnala (Punjab), Champhai (Mizoram) and Virudhunagar (Tamil Nadu). The other such places include Guntur (Andhra Pradesh), Valsad (Gujarat), and Shajapur (Madhya Pradesh).