
Amazon India is now live - vineetdhanawat
http://www.amazon.in/
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sameerp1
The key thing that people need to be aware of is that Amazon is still not
allowed to sell anything in India. They are exclusively a marketplace because
the Indian govt does not allow foreign investment into e-commerce.

Instead for now they are an intermediary. The end customer pays Amazon the
money who passes it onto the actual seller (after taking some commission).
Amazon might even handle the logistics for some sellers. But the transaction
is between the marketplace seller and the customer.

Until Amazon is granted approval to become a seller on their own right, their
impact on Indian e-commerce will be much more limited than it would be
otherwise.

~~~
general_failure
Allowing foreign investment into e-commerce can't come soon enough. The main
reason the e-commerce space in India has not picked up fast enough is this.

~~~
shreyansj
Why do you feel that foreign investment into e-commerce is the solution?

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kamaal
There are many reasons. Biggest is competition works wonders for consumers.

Secondly, It creates an environment where a lot can be learn't from others.

The current environment for start ups in India is in large part due to
inspiration, effect and to an extent competition from the silicon valley.

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hpagey
I think the key to successful ecommerce model in India is hybrid of online and
offline experiences. I had the following idea floating in my mind for long
time now . Let me know if it makes sense

a) You franchise out "ecommerce" physical shops. This is a physical location
where customer can come in surf ecommerce websites and place an order.

b) There is someone at this shop who will collect money on behalf of ecommerce
websites. This could be cash credit debit whatever. Make these shops available
at every nukad (every street). Hell give other shop owners these ecommerce
terminals (just like sim card selling process or prepaid minutes fulfillment
process) .

c) The packages are shipped to this shop or your home. Since these shops are
conveniently located, near train stations, in airports, malls, picking up
packages is not an hassle.

d) serve complimentary hot tea while people are shopping.

The actual order is fulfilled at an warehouse just like amazon.

~~~
rluhar
This is quite similar to way convenience stores work in Japan. You can pay at
a convenience store and get Amazon to ship your goods to a convenience store.
Japan (similar to India) is still very much a cash based society and I suppose
some people prefer to pay in cash at a convenience store instead of paying
online.

India also has loads of tiny convenience stores, I think this is an excellent
idea. It also simplifies the logistics. The eCommerce company only has to
build out a supply chain to the convenience store instead of having to deliver
to each customer or rely on the Indian postal service.

(I have lived both in India and Japan)

~~~
tellarin
In China you can have Amazon (and other major e-commerce firms) ship things to
your home or office and pay in cash on delivery (for most items).

The amount of delivery people in Beijing, especially near lunch time, is quite
impressive.

~~~
garindra
What's the protocol when the customer can't pay on delivery?

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tellarin
As far as I know, the company keeps the goods. And the more high-priced items
(laptop, TV, etc.) can't be paid in cash on delivery (only credit card or
Internet banking accepted for those).

~~~
irahul
In India, laptops can be cash-on-delivery. When I order from Flipkart(India's
very own Amazon), I always opt for cash-on-delivery. I see no point in paying
up-front when sometimes they don't have the goods and I have to wait for
refunds. The delivery person carries card reader, so there is no need to carry
large amounts of cash.

~~~
axomhacker
Mostly everything from Flipkart (and for that matter, it appears, from Amazon)
can be bought cash-on-delivery.

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irahul
> Mostly everything from Flipkart (and for that matter, it appears, from
> Amazon) can be bought cash-on-delivery.

I know most of the things can be bough cash-on-delivery. I was responding to
"high priced items viz. laptops" can't be bought cash-on-delivery.

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Pxtl
As a Canadian, let me just let you know you're going to have to wait a few
years for it to stop sucking. Amazon Canada was a joke for most of its
existence, and had only gotten close to the American offerings in breadth and
pricing in the last year or two.

~~~
scott_karana
I wish I was as optimistic as you: I still find the Canadian store to be
pretty pathetic.

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valgaze
Interesting- there's free delivery and also COD "cash on delivery"

Screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/Og9xMtn.png>

Policy:
[http://www.amazon.in/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=mk_ss...](http://www.amazon.in/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=mk_sss_dp_1?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201193510&pop-
up=1)

~~~
gnok
The COD part is somewhat cultural. Very few people in India will trust a
credit card based system that requires you to hand over your credit card
number online and accept delivery at some point in the future. Cash usage in
general is disproportionately higher than other forms. I think direct payments
from bank accounts is next. Cards rank a distant third.

~~~
mayanksinghal
It is also the case that Debit Cards are insanely popular in India, a lot more
than Credit Cards. Secondly, Online Banking (banks exposing merchant APIs) is
also very popular for internet purchases as it removes the middleman.

~~~
Sven7
What's an example of "banks exposing merchant APIs"?

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mayanksinghal
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any documentation for these services. It is
possible that the APIs are published only for the merchants who are authorized
to use them, payment gateways like CCAvenue and TPSL being some of them.

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samirahmed
Interestingly amazon is in the backseat here and it will be interesting to see
how they succeed. From my understanding <http://www.flipkart.com/> is the
dominant player in the online shopping marketing in India

~~~
calpaterson
The reason they are in the backseat is that protectionist legislation
prevented them from trading in India. The end result is that Indian book
prices are quite high for a country with largely third-world living standards.

~~~
shreyansj
I was under the impression that the books sold in India (and some other Asian
countries) are low-priced international editions of those books. This is
specially true for college textbooks with foreign authors.

~~~
fakeer
Extremely low cost and I practically(and truly) can't afford a book Amazom
USA, even an eBook. So, ones that is not available in India or is available at
sth like INR 3000 or 4000 or so, I pirate.

~~~
kamaal
I admire your courage for saying this.

For others, this is how it always happens here in India.

On the other hand when the books are priced well. There is actually sweet spot
for which Indian consumers will happily pay. For example I can quote of Rashmi
Bansal's books. Especially 'Stay hungry, Stay Foolish'. It was priced so well,
I hardly saw any pirated books on the footpaths people were more than happy to
buy the book.

Compare this to say with a book like "Seven habits of highly effective people'
there was a time when hawkers on the footpaths would have something 100 copies
always stocked because the original book was expensive and pirated ones sold
like hot cakes.

You won't believe this, a while back I would visit Avenue road in Bangalore
and one round with foot path hawkers could give you a hint on the best sellers
in the market currently.

~~~
fakeer
I had bought Rashmi Bansal's book when it was released. I am not sure how high
it was priced at the time but I guess it was not more than 125 or so. It was a
well priced book. I think she had reduced the middleman's[0] commission to a
great extent.

Funny thing about that book, you can buy it legitimately at ~90 and even
street vendors(pirated copy sellers) usually sell it at 50+ and people still
buy :-) I think they never got that taste of that feeling when you read a
book, hold it your hand, travel with it and then over the time appreciate the
crease on it and dream passing it over to your bloodline hoping they would
love reading books.

Anyway, I still feel bad having to pirate any book or film or songs. Very bad.
Though my next statement is technically incorrect but there are times I can't
avoid pirating a book.

I have reduced my music piracy. I've reduced/ the number of songs I listen to
around ~ 7GB (almost all of them 320kbps or 8-20 MB on an average). Out of
them around 4GB I've purchased and to be honest a lot of them is from
Flipkart's 10 day freebie bonanza, but I've purchased from other sources a lot
and I must say that A 7-9 Rupee DRM free song is a deal sweeter than
saccharine so I like a song and I buy it. I can even go a lot more if the cost
goes directly to the artist or most and I do it. Like Indian Ocean's music. I
hope in a few months I'll not have any pirated song on my pc or phone. I use
Spotify so that also covers a lot.

I've not have any good and affordable[1] alternative for fils. I hope sth like
Netflix/Hulu comes up in India or even a good DVD/BRay rental online shop
which offers quality with a price. The ones we have don't have many worthwhile
films int heir inventory.

Yes, you are right - pricing does affect privacy, in a positive way to check
it. However there are people who would just pirate! Piracy is imprinted on
their minds and they never bothered to check whether it's a necessity and or
is there a mid-way like a friend who stopped using WhatsApp the day his 1 yr
trial was over, he just had to pay INR 55 for another year. Though I should
have been this judgemental, still active in piracy myself.

[0] Publisher, distributor, agent etc

[1] Again, this is my point of view and someone else can just say I can buy
the movies at INR 500 a dvd and this is just an excuse to pirate.

~~~
vilgax
For movies checkout Bigflix. Their subscription plan seems cheap but don't
know anything about movie collection or T&C.

~~~
fakeer
Tried them. The quality is at least 3-4 times worse than the DVDRips and not
even mentionable in the same breathe as a BRRip.

And it used to decide to crash from time to time and then it would simply stop
streaming and buffering and you couldn't do anything about that.

There's a new player in town CatchFlix. Haven't checked them.

There's also BoxTV which worse than them all.

And range sucked in all of them.

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pyvek
Launch infographic - [http://g-ec2.images-
amazon.com/images/G/31/Press_Releases/Am...](http://g-ec2.images-
amazon.com/images/G/31/Press_Releases/AmINmarketplace.png)

More -
[http://www.amazon.in/b/ref=footer_press?ie=UTF8&node=159...](http://www.amazon.in/b/ref=footer_press?ie=UTF8&node=1592137031)

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gnufied
Don't know why Kaspersky Internet Security is warning about phishing url for
all the Amazon.in links. Has anyone else seen it?

~~~
nikic
I'm seeing it too. Probably people have used domains like amazon.XYZ for
phishing in the past.

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copper-horse
Ah, well, they'll find the right person to pay eventually and they'll be a
real business in India...

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swohns
Used to work in International Dev for a ecom company, and India was a serious
target. We ended up going elsewhere because of delivery infrastructure and
local competitors, that free delivery is going to be a huge advantage.

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suprasanna
I'm visiting India currently from the States and the biggest hurdle to
launching delivery sort of services here must have been effecively locating
homes.

Addresses that most "western" countries consider expected (ex. 1 Apple Loop,
City, State Zip) don't exist here. Companies literally print on ads "On ____
Road, near ____ Terminal behind ______ City, State".

If Amazon somehow figured this out for India delivery - they'll do great.

Lastly, a 30 day return policy (or any return policy) is unheard of here.
Electronics, clothes, anything I bought here strictly said no returns no
matter what (even if defective).

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manojlds
I don't know how the address is a issue. Care to explain?

30 day return policy? Check out flipkart.com, amongst others.

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nleach
Interesting that the IP address resolves to their datacenter in Ireland. I
would have assumed either Singapore or Tokyo. Is there any reason that a
continental connection is preferable to an.. aquatic one?

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canttestthis
Bandwidth is very expensive in both Singapore and Tokyo.

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nleach
In e-commerce, doesn't latency == $$? Is the bandwidth premium really that
much higher? Or is the performance difference between the geographies
negligible?

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BoyWizard
This is true for places that have good conditions and internet. You have to
remember, power outages are a daily occurrences in even built up places such
as Bangalore, and internet connectivity isn't crash hot anyway. Latency of the
website won't have as much of an impact in these conditions (IMO, anyway)

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vishal0123
Its good to see that amazon has price similar to similar competing website,
which is mostly $2-$5, rather than US standard price $10-$14. Compare the
price of bestselling books in flipkart and amazon.in from
<http://www.flipkart.com/view-books/l327/> and
<http://www.amazon.in/gp/bestsellers/books/>

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houshuang
Great to see a good selection of Hindi novels, wish they were available for
Kindle though. (Don't think the e-ink Kindles can even render Hindi though)

~~~
__mharrison__
Not true, they can render hindi.

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mey
Finding it odd that they are using an image instead of unicode for INR, ₹. Is
the browser support simply not there?

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drivers99
I can't see the symbol you posted, so apparently not. (both FireFox 21.0 and
IE8, Windows 7).

~~~
mey
I see it fine on Chrome (latest stable) Win 7 Pro, but that explains it.

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evolutionblues
Looks like they have only launched with Movies and Books - hopefully other
categories will follow.

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goatcurious
They plan to manage delivery too: <http://www.nextbigwhat.com/amazon-india-
courier-service-297/>

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philfrasty
First point one sees on the page is so India „Genuine Products“ :)

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akbaralis
What about <http://www.junglee.com/>. Thought that was Amazon's India store.

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ihsw
Junglee didn't sell anything but instead offered referrals to third-party
seller sites[1].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junglee.com>

~~~
ravinder
Yup it is similar to google shopping www.google.com/shopping

~~~
anirudhgarg
I think they are still doing the same thing. Doesn't look like any products
are actually sold by Amazon.

~~~
jsolson
They're providing transaction processing, inventory tracking, and in some
cases (e.g., <http://www.amazon.in/gp/product/9380349300> selected at random
from the gateway) fulfillment services.

Given the scope of their 3P seller business in other markets (say, the US),
this constitutes a much larger entry into the market than some comments are
making it out to be.

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vinitool76
Threat to Flipkart? I think yes, let flipkart create a good market for you and
now come and rule. Smart Idea!

~~~
bonchibuji
The founders of Flipkart (Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal) used to work for
Amazon. So, I think there's no doubt of where they got the business model for
Flipkart from.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipkart>

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gautamsewani
Wasn't FDI in retail for online sales banned in India? When did that change?
(If it ever was the case).

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amalag
Possibly dumb question, what is the difference between amazon.in and
junglee.com ?

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jmaddox
WTF, only books and movies on the first day, Who wants to buy these.

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nvenky
I hope they could enable the Kindle store soon for amazon.in

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linux_devil
Are they planning to have their own warehouse in India?

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suyash
Wasn't Amazon already in India under a different name?

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sameerp1
Junglee is a product discovery site. It was basically created to give them an
in with sellers within India and make feelers in Indian e-commerce until they
could work out their own logistics and other issues.

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samspenc
Wow this has taken like forever. But congrats!

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fakeer
It's the beginning so I wouldn't say "the inventory disappoints me" outright.
But it does. It's not a garage startup's inventory for haven's sake.

Two friends have started a sort of startup for books and movies and their
inventory is comparable, though with a shitty interface for which I have
shamed them many times.

