Amazon declares itself fastest growing e-commerce firm in India

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Dec 3, 2018

Amazon India is the country’s fastest growing e-commerce player, says Amazon India’s country head Amit Agarwal. The business has challenged Walmart’s assertion of Flipkart’s dominance in India.

Barclays Plc recently reported that Amazon India had beaten Flipkart with gross sales of $7.5 billion (Rs 49,896 crore) in the 2018 financial year. This was a significantly higher total than Flipkart which, according to Barclays Plc, totalled $6.2 billion in gross sales in the same time period. The report came as a surprise to many after Flipkart’s new parent company Walmart had asserted that the business was the largest e-commerce firm in the country.

Agarwal told Mint in an interview that one reason for this is the huge increase in items for sale on the platform. “We have now more than 170 million items on Amazon.in,” explained Agarwal. “If you track the growth of selection, probably more than half of them got added in the last 12 months. You can’t achieve those flywheel effects till you focus on the basics. When I look at the last 12-18 months, our rate of selection expansion has gone up because more and more of our sellers are choosing to sell on Amazon.”

Amazon India has also focused on discounting and Agarwal believes that this also contributed to its increase in sales. The business does not intend to slow down any time soon in India. “It’s still very early for e-commerce in India and Amazon is also just getting started in India,” asserted Agarwal. “We are really committed to India for the long term.”