Festive season sale: Here's how Amazon India plans to reinforce associate brands to compete Flipkart, Paytm, others

The programme announced by Amazon ahead of the festive season during the year can surely be a masterstroke as it will be competing directly against Flipkart.

The Seattle-based retail conglomerate had around 1 lakh sellers on Amazon India platform in 2015. (Image: PTI)

In order to help small traders and emerging brands of the country, online retail giant Amazon has started a new programme ‘Select’ which will help them gain access to a suit of brand building tools. From this special programme, the SME brands will get unconventional services across consumer insights, brand consulting and protection etc. “We have been piloting 'Select' over the last few months and have worked with over 100 brands. We have helped them get access to a suite of brand building tools and services spanning across discovery, consumer insights, brand consulting inputs, and enhanced brand protection services,” PTI quoted Amazon’s India Director and General Manager (Seller Services) Gopal Pillai as saying. The programme announced by the e-commerce major ahead of the much-awaited festive season during the year can surely be a masterstroke as it will be competing directly against Walmart-back Flipkart and other e-tail majors in the country. Currently, Amazon India has over 4 lakh sellers on its platform. Pillai further stated that with the ‘Select’ program, Amazon focuses to build a long-term association with these brands which will even help them in generating high volumes for their businesses on the platform and will also assist them in achieving their business aspirations. During its pilot run, brands such as Miss Chase, The Yaya Cafe, Soul Fit, Skin Elements, Zink London and Daily Objects were brought on board. “Our aim is to help across a brands' value chain, from generating assortment insights, to providing quick-turnaround logistics solutions, and driving traffic to their products. Select is a horizontal/cross-category offering targeted at new and existing brands with differentiated product solutions," Pillai added. The Seattle-based retail conglomerate had around 1 lakh sellers on Amazon India platform in 2015 which went almost double within a span of 11 months. “Interestingly, it has took us just 15 months to go from 2 lakh to 4 lakh sellers now, who offer over 170 million products to customers,” he said adding that this reflects the strong growth trajectory the company is on in the Indian market.