Amazon gets into India’s e-commerce market. Really? Sort of. Can you buy products from the website? Yes, sort of. Is the Kindle available? Sort of. What is the address—amazon.co.in or amazon.in? None of those. It’s junglee.com. Wait, what? It’s like this. Amazon, in any other country, works like a normal online shop. Firstly, it has it’s own inventory which is displayed on it’s website. Users register with it and give it their credit/debit card details once, and from then on, buy products at the click of a button. Then it has what’s called a ‘marketplace’. Other retailers, or even people like you and me who want to sell their stuff, register with Amazon and display their products (could be books, Macbooks etc) on the website. An example: when users want a book, they check Amazon and choose whichever seller is selling it cheapest, and buy from it through Amazon’s payment system. Amazon acts like a middleman and takes a cut. In the future if there are any problems—like dissatisfaction with quality, or delivery blues—Amazon takes responsibility and it’s excellent customer service team helps users. At the end, everyone is happy. Amazon, because it is making billions, sellers because they have a good place to sell, and users most of all, because they are buying exactly what they want (I once bought a first edition Naipaul) at transparent rates, without hidden costs, and gimmicks like Ebay’s auctions, where even experienced users should tread cautiously.
In India though, Amazon has gone ahead with a different approach. Presumably owing to the FDI fiasco, and maybe because of issues with sales tax, instead of starting it’s own store, it has launched an Indian website it bought 10 years ago. To call Junglee a store would be an insult. As Amazon itself says in it’s press release, it ‘organises product selection from Indian and global brands’. So, in effect, it is like a price aggregator. Once you choose a product on Junglee, you’re given options of where you can buy it. Once you select the retailer, you are transferred to their website, which means you end up giving your card information to a website you don’t know anything about. And every time you want to buy a new product, you can find yourself going to a different website, ending up giving your details to a bunch of online retailers.
Secondly, the pricing of products is a nightmare on Junglee, particularly when it comes to shipping from outside India. To check the pricing, I selected the 6” Wi-Fi Kindle, whose price Junglee says starts at Rs 5,601 and is sold from the US-based amazon.com. I have no idea how Junglee came at that figure, as I found myself at the end of the process with a price tag of $149. Kindle sells for $109 and with the cheapest shipping it came to $149, which on the day I am writing this, translates to Rs 7,242. And once you buy the Kindle, you’ll end up on the American website every time you want to buy an ebook.
The service, still in beta, boasts of 12 million products at launch—an interesting number. But when it says it’s selling them from 14,000 international and domestic brands, it gives you only one impression. Behind the beautiful Amazonian facade, it’s a Jungle out there.
The author is a tech geek.
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