During the festive season, Indians will ask “kaha se liya” and the answer will be “Amazon Se Liya.” - Noor Patel, Amazon India

Amazon India's Great Indian Festival 2022 starts today, with a large number of deals, new launches, and discounts on lakhs of products. This festive sale event is eCommerce major's biggest annual event in the country, and on this occasion, we caught up with Vice President, Amazon India, Noor Patel to find out more about the Great Indian Festival

Excerpts

The Amazon Great Indian Festival’ (GIF) 2022 starts from September 23, 2022, with Prime members getting early access. We are excited to serve our customers with millions of sellers offering a wide selection of domestic and international brands, products from 2 lakh local stores, traditional artisans and weavers, and innovative offerings from various startups. This year’s festive season will be a bit more special to us as we return closer to normalcy. We look forward to welcoming our customers to the marketplace and enjoying the festivities. Amazon Great India Festival will offer customers to shop from India’s largest selection across electronics, grocery, fashion and beauty, everyday essentials, and more. We are delighted to partner with leading brands to deliver products with speed and safety across all serviceable pin codes of India. We will continue to maximize seller and partner success and provide the convenience of shopping in 8 regional languages along with English, while giving the option to also shop using voice.

The shopping event will give customers access to exciting offers from leading partner banks such as SBI Bank; 10% Instant discount on SBI Credit & Debit Cards & EMI Transactions, no-cost EMI on Debit & Credit Cards, and great deals from other leading Credit/Debit Cards, and much more. Customers can also earn virtual “Diamonds” by shopping, watching free entertaining videos on miniTV, playing Games on FunZone & using Amazon Pay and redeem them for exciting cashbacks.

Over the last year, we have seen immense growth in the smartphones category not just being driven by tier I but tier II & III cities too. Customers are choosing more mid-range and premium devices with better build quality and specs as they continue to spend more time on their smartphones (work from home, video calls, OTT content or playing online games). We have witnessed that customers are switching from feature smartphones and gravitate towards smartphones which are ideal for multitasking and can manage work, entertainment, and day-to-day use-cases as well. We have also seen that premium smartphones above 20K have seen growth in double digits. The growth in units last year was led by the 20K-30K and 30-50K price segments which saw significant growth YoY respectively. This was driven by the post-covid requirement for high-performance smartphones.

On the other hand, Consumer Electronics & Personal Computing continues to be one of the most popular categories on Amazon.in. Over the last one year, we have witnessed double-digit growth across metros and Tier II & III cities. We have seen surge in demand for products such as laptops, headphones, tablets, keyboards, printers and more. There is more than 20% growth Y0Y no. of customers upgrading their electronic devices. Over the last year, we have seen customers gravitate towards electronics which are ideal for multitasking and can manage work, entertainment, and day-to-day use-cases as well. We expect more customers to opt for hi-tech features and performance-centric electronics. We expect high customer demand for laptops, headphones, and speakers. In addition, with corporates adopting hybrid workplace model, we are a seeing a lot of traction for business/productivity laptops and Amazon expects to see a growth in monitors category and PC accessories such as mouse, keyboard, docking stations etc. to improve office like productivity at home as a use-case.

Amazon Great India Festival 2022 will offer customers to shop from India’s largest selection at great deals across electronics, grocery, fashion and beauty, everyday essentials, and more. We are delighted to partner with leading brands to launch more than 2,000 new products across categories. Customers can earn virtual “Diamonds” by shopping, watching free entertaining videos on miniTV, playing Games on FunZone & using Amazon Pay and redeem them for exciting cashbacks. They can also directly interact with experts who will showcase products, unveil top deals, answer customer questions in real-time, and offer limited-duration deals. We are looking to work with more than 150 influencers to generate 600 live streams to help customers make informed purchase decisions. We also have live streams where customers can avail LIVE-only discounts.

Additionally, to help new sellers kickstart their e-commerce journey this festive season, all new sellers registering on Amazon.in between August 28th to October 26th and launching within 90 days from date of registration will be eligible to avail 50% waiver on the selling fee* across all categories. We hope that this festive season will bring growth and success to all our sellers and that we continue to offer our customers the widest selection, convenience, and fast delivery for them to look forward to celebrating this festive season from the comfort and safety of their home.

During the festive season, Indians will ask “kaha se liya” and the answer will be “Amazon Se Liya.”

The pandemic accelerated technology adoption and a structural shift in online shopping behaviour. We saw more customers coming online for their shopping needs. Now, due to the increase in digital adoption, customers are choosing more premium devices with the better build quality, high specs, and performance-centric devices. Talking about the Smartphones, consumers are opting for Smartphones with a stronger processor with good memory space, a powerful battery, larger screen sizes with super smooth AMOLED displays are most preferred by the customers. Moreover, we also saw customers choosing 5G ready smartphones with the 5G spectrum launching in India, and customers preferring the smartphones which are “future-ready”.

Talking about the Televisions, this is the first year when companies are expecting good demand across product segments, after two damp festive seasons due to Covid-19. With more disposable incomes in the hands of people, having saved on vacations and eating out over the last two years, companies say that consumers are now willing to spend that money on better and premium products. Amazon is the foremost choice of consumers when it comes to online TV purchases, and scores highest among online e-commerce portals when it comes to brand trust. This festive season, companies will see more demand for smart TV market driven by the rising demand for home entertainment, a wide variety of affordable launches, an increase in broadband penetration, and multiple discounts and offers. Consumers are opting for enhanced specifications to get a better viewing experience, like sound system improvements and larger screen sizes. Entry and mid segment sales for television may also show signs of some recovery.

The trends observed in the laptop category is that we have been witnessing a huge demand for entry-level laptops from brands like Honor, Redmi, HP and Lenovo. Interestingly, we have also seen demand for PC components such as RAM, HDD and Printer Ink along with entry-level smartwatches. Along with this, Gaming continues to be a strong growth driver as customers are looking for gaming laptops from brands like HP and Asus. Plus, the demand for premium gaming headsets and mouse is also increasing from brands like Logitech, Hyperx and HP.

We at Amazon, have witnessed a strong demand coming from Tier 2 cities and smaller towns as our delivery and fulfilment networks have expanded to make the delivery even faster. Today, 65% of customer orders and over 86% of new customers on Amazon.in are from tier 2 and below geographies. Customers across nearly 100% of India’s serviceable pin codes are shopping with us. Today, customers don’t just come to Amazon.in for their shopping needs but for so much more – booking tickets, paying bills, getting entertained, donating to causes and a lot more.

In the smartphone category, we observed that 3 out of 4 smartphones that are sold on Amazon.in are being purchased by customers from Tier 2 cities and towns, which directly reflects the demand in tier 2 cities. Customers even in remote parts of the country continue to trust us for safe & reliable deliveries. In fact, more than half of the smartphone orders on Amazon.in are coming from Tier 3 or smaller cities.

Currently, we have observed that premium/mid-range laptops from brands like Apple, HP, Lenovo, Dell, MSI, Acer, Xiaomi, Honor are popular in regions such as Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana among others. Entry-level and high performance are the most preferred gaming laptops in these regions. Customers even in remote parts of the country continue to trust us for safe & reliable deliveries.

If we look at product reviews, to ensure authenticity, we relentlessly innovate to improve customer experience, helping them make informed decisions.For instance, when we first started showcasing customer reviews alongside the product for sale, some didn't understand why we would highlight positive and negative feedback on products in our marketplace.

To us, the answer was simple—we are obsessed with delighting customers over the long term, and that requires providing genuine product reviews that helped customers make purchase decisions and receive products that met their expectations.

Amazon LIVE: This GIF, customers can directly interact with experts who will showcase products, unveil top deals, answer customer questions in real-time, and offer limited-duration deals. We are looking to work with more than 150 influencers to generate 600 live streams to help customers make an informed purchase decision. We also have livestreams where customers can avail LIVE-only discounts.