Junglee.com: Amazon Enters India
Amazon.com has finally entered the Indian online retail space. They have chosen a completely new branding and a funny yet catchy domain to be more attractive to the Indian customer: www.junglee.com.
According to Amazon – “Junglee enables customers to find and discover products from online and offline retailers in India and from Amazon.com.” The website mentions that you can find over 1.2 crore products and over 14,000 brands.
The recent years have seen an exponential growth in e-commerce in India. Last year, that is in 2011 there was an estimated $10 billion in online sales. This is one thing that major online retailers cannot ignore for long. I’m certain that other retailers such as NewEgg and eCost will sooner or later and of the Indian market as well.
After USA and China, India has the third largest e-commerce market. In the recent years, Indian customers have taken a particular interest in making purchases online. This is quite evident from the number of new e-commerce portals that have sprung up in the recent years.
In the early years, the average Indian was reluctant to make purchases that didn’t involve face-to-face transactions. However, this trend has changed in the recent years with increase in Internet penetration in the country.
In order to manage the website, sales and dispatch, Amazon.com is setting up a facility in Hyderabad and is expected to employ around 3000 given. It will be interesting to see how Amazon will fare in India because the Indian market is very much different from the US which happens to be the traditional stronghold of Amazon.
The entry of Amazon in India is a definite indicator of the potential of the Indian market. We can expect other major players into the market very soon. We as customers will benefit greatly from this because we will have a number of options when making purchases.
