In India since June 2013, Amazon took nearly three years to reach a seller base of 100,000. However, within twenty months, this base increased three-fold. Amazon’s strategy in India is ‘Glocal’– the ability to think globally but act locally – adopting global principles of selection, pricing and convenience, while creating customized local offerings developed ground-up for the Indian market.
General manager and director of seller services, Gopal Pillai said, “One of the main reasons we are successful in India is that the execution is totally ‘Indianized‘. We designed tailor-made strategies for India.”
These India-specific strategies include:
- investing time, energy, and resources, to understand the nuances of India’s consumer market
- designing a lighter version of its app since over 500 million Indian consumers use feature phones with slow network connections
- using machine learning and artificial intelligence to reach addresses, including a 0-to-100 confidence score for an address
- designing algorithms to detect fake reviews, fraudulent transactions, and fake products
- expanding its network of fulfillment centers
- facilitating e-commerce for smaller retailers that offer unique products
- investing in R&D: Amazon’s largest R&D center outside of Seattle is in Bangalore
