Amazon's India avatar attracts users

Within four days of its launch, Junglee.com has generated much interest and has attracted one-sixth of the internet users who visit Flipkart.com and nearly half of those who go to Infibeam.com

Within four days of its launch, Amazon's India avatar, Junglee.com, is already seeing considerable interest among shoppers.

In the last four days Junglee.com has clocked one-sixth of the internet user who visit Flipkart.com and nearly half of those who visit Infibeam.com.

According to Alexa, a web information & analytics site, visitors to Junglee.com viewed nine pages per visit and are spending an average seven minutes on the site each time. Visitors to Ebay.in spend a little over 10 minutes and those on Flipkart spend about 8 minutes.

“It’s very interesting to note how Amazon’s Junglee.com has been able to draw visitors to its site within a few days of launch and without spending any rupee on marketing or traffic building. E-commerce sites in India need to take notice of this,” says Mahesh Murthy, CEO and founder of Pinstorm. He added that leading e-commerce site, Flipkart, needs to take stock of the fact that eBay.in’s daily reach (percentage of global internet users who visit the site, as defined by Alexa) has gone past Flipkart in the last seven days.

The good news is that Junglee.com is driving 74 per cent of its traffic from Amazon sites (global), and nearly 70 per cent of the traffic goes back to Amazon sites from Junglee. Alexa data also shows that about 4 per cent of the traffic from Junglee.com goes to Flipkart while about 7 per cent of the traffic moves to Facebook. Murthy comments, “This shows that Junglee.com users are beginning to move to Amazon sites for shopping or comparing their purchases.”

Junglee.com, unlike its parent in the US, is modelled as a market place. It has entered into partnership with several Indian online and offline retailers like HomeShop18, Hidesign, Dabur Uveda, the Bombay Store and other. It has also entered into partnership with online players like Snapdeal, Univercell, Saholic, a Spice Group firm and Fommy.co.in.

Mehul Choksi Group Chairman and Managing Director of Gitanjali Group, agreed with the Alexa trend. “I have been told that our online sale and the hits that we have received in the last three to four days have been better than what we have seen in the recent past. For Gitanjali, Amazon is a very large and important partner,” he added.

But the industry players are not reading too much into the sudden rise in the user hits on Junglee.com. Nor do they feel that Amazon is using the Indian site to get more users to its global site.

“From my reading, Amazon has chosen its India entry as a comparison site. This will also give them a better understanding about the buying patterns of the Indian consumer in terms of products and pricing,” said a senior executive of an online retail outlet on condition of anonymity.

Sandeep Komaravelly, Head, Marketing and Alliances, Snapdeal, believes that the sudden spurt of activity on Junglee could be due to the interest generated by Amazon's announcement of an India entry and curiosity among the internet buyers.

“It is too early to quantify the increase of hits or users that we have seen in the last four days because of our partnership with Amazon. We already get over one million visitors on Snapdeal. We are here as Junglee is modelled as a market place. And the users, if they choose to buy, get directed to the vendor site. Hence, it works for us,” said Komaravelly.