“There is a set of people that will require a local influencer to help them shop. If you see the first part of the journey, the metro penetration moved faster. In the social commerce piece — where an uncle or an aunt or a cousin living in your building actually helps you shop — we feel very good about how we can scale it up,” said Tiwary.
Tiwary was recently promoted to oversee all of Amazon India’s day to day operations with Amit Agarwal being given an additional emerging markets role along with India,
as ET reported on March 1.
The Seattle-headquartered etailer said it is now looking to onboard more physical stores on its India platform to increase the number of goods that can be delivered quickly to customers. Tiwary said Amazon can deliver within two days in 93% of the pin codes in which it operates.
“I strongly believe that to get to the next 500 million customers we need a couple of million more sellers on this marketplace. And this set of new sellers will largely be physical stores,” he said.
Amazon India currently has 1.1 million sellers on its platform. Its total user base is more than 100 million.
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Last month, Amazon also launched Smart Commerce, an initiative that will help offline stores set up their own digital storefronts, in addition to selling on its India marketplace. This is similar to what Canada-based Shopify does.
“For more and more people to shop with us our seller flywheel has to move. If you look at the seller ecosystem there are manufacturers, traders, and then there is something which is very unique to india — 13 million stores. Our philosophy on selection and convenience is making us double down on stores,” Tiwary said, adding it has already onboarded 150,000-160,000 stores on the platform.
Amazon’s focus on social commerce is in line with its recent acquisition of Glowroad, which has introduced a zero-commission policy since then. According to Tiwary, the emphasis on social commerce came from the realisation that it will need different models to cater a market like India. It is also taking a bet on videos (Prime Video, miniTV), voice, and influencer-led commerce.
In total, the ecommerce firm has pumped in over $6.5 billion in India and will continue to invest here across segments to grow its core commerce business like grocery. In the grocery segment, Amazon is competing with many players, including new quick commerce firms. Tiwary admitted that the company should have had a better grocery offering in place by now.
“I would admit we should have had a better grocery offering quite some time back. We experimented with Pantry and Fresh. It was confusing for the customer and we folded it back into Amazon Fresh,” he said.
Tiwary said the company will continue to offer two-hour delivery through Amazon Fresh.
“Grocery is a huge market. There is enough space and there will be innovative models,” he said, when asked if Amazon is looking to offer quick grocery delivery service in about 30 mintues, similar to Swiggy’s Instamart, Zepto, Blinkit and others.
“If someone finds a sustainable way of delivering groceries in 10 minutes we will learn from them,” he said, indicating Amazon had no immediate plans to enter the ultra-fast grocery delivery segment. Arch rival Flipkart has started offering grocery deliveries in about 45 minutes but the Walmart-owned eatiler is also not venturing into 15-30 minutes deliveries for grocery and essentials.
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