Flipkart to use Microsoft's artificial intelligence for future sales

The e-commerce major has claimed it was miles ahead of Amazon during its recent five-day festive sales

India's largest e-commerce marketplace Flipkart, which just concluded its Big Billion Days festive sales, is looking to leverage technology to make conducting future sales festivals easier, according to reports. 

The e-commerce major is working with global information technology giant Microsoft to deploy solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to make running future sales easier, the Economic Times reported on Tuesday while citing Flipkart's head of engineering. 

Speaking to the financial daily, Flipkart's vice-president of engineering, Vinay YS, said the company was looking to optimise merchandising and offer placement using AI and ML. He said the e-commerce firm was looking to do away with "manual tuning and optimisation" in such areas. Further, he told the financial daily that Flipkart wanted to partner with Microsoft on voice recognition technology.  

As reported earlier, Flipkart has claimed it was miles ahead of Amazon during the five-day festive sales that ended during the midnight of September 24. 

The Indian firm was confident it had captured 70 per cent of the country’s online shopping market during this period. While none of the two firms shared their data on gross merchandise value (GMV) or the number of units sold, Amazon refrained from even giving its market share figures.

The preliminary data collated by RedSeer Consulting show that Flipkart is not very far from its claim.

As reported in April this year, Flipkart is looking to put in use its mammoth pile of data to predict sales of products months in advance. 

The company is working on an AI-based solution that will give it an edge over rivals by helping it make smarter decisions in ordering, distribution and pricing products on its platform. Ultimately, the AI system will allow Flipkart to boost efficiency and reduce the cost of products for customers.

However, its rival, Amazon, which has around a 10-year headstart over Flipkart, is known to have some of the most advanced sales prediction engines. 

The e-commerce player also has Amazon Echo, a home device which uses a built-in chatbot named Alexa that responds to the user's voice and takes all kinds of commands. Alexa can also be used to shop at Amazon.

As reported earlier, Myntra, Urban Ladder, and Snapdeal have also invested in and employ AI-based solutions.