With benefits such as two-day free shipping, free video and music streaming, and a heads up on instant deals, Amazon Prime members drive revenues for the company, and Amazon is looking to replicate the same model in India, which it considers to be a region of huge opportunity.
Forbes reports that Amazon is scouting Indian production houses for building its local video streaming content and is also hiring industry experts to set up its Prime Video team. It will invest $300 million in creating original video content for Prime Video. This investment is part of the $3 billion fresh funding for India announced by the company earlier this year. Video-on-demand is at a nascent stage in India and is expected to witness significant growth in the next five years, with subscribers expected to grow to 105 million by 2020 from the 15 million figure forecast for 2015.
For Amazon to establish itself as a dominant player in the e-commerce market, it will have to adapt its Prime memberships to suit the value conscious consumers in India. Prime Video can play an important role and Amazon’s investment in creating original content for its video-on-demand service will be well worth it.
