Amazon Sets Sights On Its Next 100 Million Customers As Festive Sale Starts
Amazon looks to break into the next 100 million customers as the e-commerce giant kicked off its festive season sale on Tuesday.
Amazon.com Inc. is eyeing its next 100 million customers from India.
“We want to take the lead in bringing the next 100 million customers for online shopping with us,” Amit Agarwal, Amazon India head, told BloombergQuint in an interview, on the first day of its ‘Great India Festival’ sale.
The Seattle, U.S.-based e-commerce giant kicked off its festive season sale on Tuesday with early access to Prime members. Agarwal said that the sale in the first 10 hours of the early access is already over twice that in the last year.
Amazon, which claims to have 150 million registered customers in India, has already launched Amazon.in in Hindi to lure shoppers from smaller towns and is also offering free first delivery to new customers.
With an eye on buyers from smaller cities, it recently opened a fulfillment centre in Bengaluru—which takes its overall storage capacity to 20 million cubic feet. It also has created over 50,000 seasonal positions across its network fulfillment centers.
This is Amazon’s first such event after Walmart acquired 77 percent stake in homegrown e-commerce firm Flipkart. “The stakes for us are high every single day.”
The fact that Amazon is almost done spending its promised $5 billion in about five years in India is testament to its aggressive expansion.
“We are here for the long run and are willing to invest,” Agarwal said. “We are barely getting started.”