BENGALURU: With massive tech adoption during the pandemic, e-commerce giant Amazon saw its prime membership swell three times during the festive season with the prime members coming from over 98 per cent of India’s pinc-codes. As the demand for OTT services and online shopping grew, the e-tailer onboarded prime customers who availed services like free shipping and access to Amazon Prime video with a Rs 999 per year subscription.
During a fireside chat at the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2020, Amazon India head Amit Agarwal said that online streaming has fuelled the growth of prime sign-ups for the e-commerce firm.
“We saw the highest–ever two days Amazon Video viewership during the holiday season in our history,” Aggarwal said.
Recent surveys by some of the independent market research firms also indicated that the viewership on streaming platforms has grown by more than 46 per cent during the pandemic and that the viewers were spending double the time watching content on OTT channels.
Agarwal added that apart from streaming services, pandemic also saw a lot of customers opting for small ticket loans from the platform under Amazon Pay later category for utility payments, which was launched during the pandemic. “Making credit accessible to our users under Amazon Pay is also generating a lot of attention. Apart from the platform, we also connect the users with the lenders,” he said.
Roping in local kiranas have also helped the e-commerce giant in ensuring faster deliveries and saving costs. “As many as 20,000 kirana stores were onboarded during the pandemic who are now catering to customers in their respective localities,” said Agarwal.
‘Over 7 lakh small biz selling on our platform’
Amazon’s India head Amit Agarwal on Friday said that the e-tailer has over 7 lakh small and medium businesses selling online on their platform.
These small businesses have, in turn, pushed Amazon’s exports to $2 billion under global selling initiative. Some of its other programmes include Easy Stores and Pay Smart Store.