Flipkart to refocus on selling books as it looks to grow customer base

As Kalyan Krishnamurthy executes his mandate of growing Flipkart's and India's base of online shoppers, he is turning his attention to the category that started it all for the homegrown e-commerce giant, books.

While Flipkart began life as an online bookseller, over the years the company shifted its focus to more lucrative categories such as smartphones. In turn, the growth of book sales never really kept pace, but now, the company has set into motion a revival of books.

Nishit Garg, Senior Director of General Merchandise at Flipkart, who also heads the books category, says his mandate is clear - take on competition (Amazon) and capture a dominant market share in the category in the next few quarters. Currently, Amazon leads the segment for books in India.

“We have grown 70 per cent in the last six months and have improved our market share as well. The first thing we did was doubled our book selection in the last 4-5 months and now we have close to seven million books to choose from. The universe of physical books is around 9 million and we’ll have them on our platform in the next four months,” says Garg.

Apart from growing its selection of books, the company is also investing heavily in its recommendation technology which suggests the right books for individual customers. Flipkart says it will leverage its vast data pools to build more accurate systems which will even work for new regional language books it is bringing to its platform.

The third and probably the most important piece of the mix to grow its book sales is delivery. Flipkart currently has seven warehouses where it stores books from its sellers, making it easier for enabling faster deliveries. In the top eight metros, which accounts for the largest chunk of book sales on Flipkart’s platform, the company says 85 per cent of all book deliveries are done within 48 hours.

“Publishers and authors have actually welcomed our focus back to the category. In the last 4-5 months, there are several big authors and publishers that have worked with us exclusively. For example Shashi Tharoor, and even celeb authors such as Sourav Ganguly and Soha Ali Khan have been talking about us for their book launches,” adds Garg.

The India market for books is worth around Rs 100 billion today, but Flipkart says it is largely focusing on just 30 per cent of the market which includes everything apart from school textbooks. This part of the market is already one of the most highly penetrated categories for online marketplaces with 35 per cent share belonging to players such as Amazon and Flipkart.

Amazon, which Flipkart wants to badly overtake, has brought in its global partnerships with publishers and the highly tuned recommendation engine which it has built using data of its hundreds of millions of customers globally. Like Flipkart, Amazon too started off as a online book seller, and is today one of the largest players in this space globally.

While books will remain a relatively low-GMV category for Flipkart, the company says it can be instrumental in bringing new customers onto the platform and also boosting repeat purchases by existing users if executed well. For the next one year, books will be one of the focus categories for the company, similar to how it is looking at growing online groceries, drawing heavy investments.

Amazon might be able to grab exclusive deals with global publishing houses, but the Indian firm isn’t too worried as it says exclusivity in books is only during the pre-order period. Once a book is launched, it’s fair game for everyone to go after sale. Flipkart is also working with other global publishers to ensure global titles are launched in India at the same time as they are in other markets.