Amazon India is set to launch its annual festival sale tomorrow (September 23) and its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform Amazon Pay has recorded six crore sign-ups from customers in the country, Amazon India's Vice President told ABP Live on Thursday ahead of its Amazon Great Indian Festival. The e-commerce giant's festival sale kicks off tomorrow, and it is a month-long sale.
According to Amazon India, its UPI platform is gaining popularity in the country and it is witnessing user growth from non-metro cities too.
"With UPI being at the forefront of digital payments revolution in the country, Amazon Pay UPI has witnessed over six crore sign-ups and in the last year, over 75 per cent of our customers using Amazon UPI have come from tier 2 and 3 cities," Noor Patel, Vice President, Amazon India, told ABP Live in an exclusive interview.
Unified Payments Interface or UPI is an instant real-time payment system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) processing inter-bank transactions. Amazon Pay UPI lets buyers on the platform use their Amazon Pay UPI ID to shop on the site, make payments for their daily purchases, including recharges and bill payments. These transactions are done without entering bank account or debit card details or going through a multi-layer process to pay from their bank account.
More than 10 lakh sellers on Amazon India
"Today, we have over 1.1 million (over 10 lakh) sellers on Amazon.in, out of which more than 90 per cent are SMBs and 50 per cent come from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. Today, 65 per cent of orders and 85 per cent of new customers are coming from Tier 2 and below cities. We are excited with this opportunity to innovate on their behalf and provide richer experiences," Patel noted.
Amazon India intends to maximise seller-partner success
"This festive season we will continue to maximise seller and partner success and deliver customer satisfaction across the country. We continue to invest in building a seamless consumer experience and to empower Indian SMBs with digital transformation and infrastructure helping them reach all serviceable pin codes in the country," the Amazon India Vice President explained.
To make it easier for prospective buyers, the company has introduced Amazon LIVE, and with this GIF customers can directly interact with experts who would showcase products, unveil top deals, answer customer questions in real-time and offer limited-duration deals.
Talking about Prime Day 2022, the top company executive mentioned that 70 per cent of the sellers who received an order were from Tier 2-Tier 3 cities like Kolhapur, Surat, Ghaziabad, Raipur, Coimbatore, Mangalore, Jalandhar and Cuttack.
Amazon Great Indian Festival supports 8 local Indian languages
During the the Amazon Great Indian Festival, customers can shop on the e-commerce platform in eight regional languages including English. The local languages supported include Bengali, Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam. More than 5 crore customers have shopped on Amazon.in using the platform's regional language offering ever since Hindi language support was added to the platform in 2018.
Huge demand of smartphones from Tier 2 cities
When it comes to the smartphone category, three out of four smartphones that are sold on the e-commerce platform are being purchased by customers from Tier 2 cities and towns, which directly reflects the demand in these areas. In fact, more than half of the smartphone orders on Amazon.in are coming from Tier 3 or smaller cities the company noted.