Amazon India to expand Prime programme, makes service more attractive

Amazon India is planning to expand its Prime subscription service to retain its existing customers by making the service more attractive, according to a report in Mint.  

Amazon India will offer 14 million new products on its service as it will now offer more than 25 million products in the Prime service, up from 11 million earlier, at a delivery speed of one or two days, Jamil Ghani, vice-president, Prime International, Amazon told the paper.

Ghani added that the company is investing more than Rs 100 crore on expanding video services offered in India as well as producing original content.

“One of our central tenets in Prime is that we increase the value of the programme to the membership. One central way to do that is to continue to invest in existing benefits like selection and video. So this expansion in selection is in line with our belief that every day customers should have more selection to enjoy. We also add value by introducing new benefits so there’s more to come there as well,” Ghani said.

The expansion of the services under Prime comes after the company increased the subscription charge by neraly 50 percent. In November, Amazon India had increased the subscription price for Prime to Rs 999 a year from Rs 499.

“With increased selection, we feel that Prime is worth that (price),” Akshay Sahi, head of Amazon Prime in India told the paper. “The benefits we’re providing have reached a significant value and customers have had enough time to try that programme.”

Prime, which offers fast video streaming to customers, has done well in top cities. Experts, however, doubt if the service will prove appealing to the masses in smaller cities and towns, which is the next frontier for e-commerce firms.

“The combination of benefits is broadly appealing. We see in every geography, including India, a distribution of members across a broad spectrum of the population. Some members join because of the fast and free shipping, some join because of video but it is broadly appealing. We’ve acquired members from 300-plus cities,” Ghani said.

Amazon is also introducing a music service, similar to Google Music, which the company will soon launch in India without any additional cost.

“In other countries, we charge an additional fee for access to the unlimited music catalogue. But in India, we’re including it in Prime at no additional charge. So from a disproportionate value stand point, when you line up the selection growth and the speed of delivery, plus the video catalogue and original content, plus music and other things in pipeline, it’s clear we are taking care of the needs and wants of our Indian customers,” Ghani added.