Amazon launches live commerce feature in India with 150 content creators

A week into the annual festive sales season, Amazon has launched its live commerce feature in India. The Amazon Live feature allows customers to directly interact with content creators who showcase products, answer customer questions in real-time, run polls, and offer limited-duration deals.

The e-commerce company said it will run 15 live streams every day from 10 am to 1 am. Over 150 content creators are live streaming during the ongoing Amazon Great Indian Festival.

“With Amazon Live launch, we want to make the shopping experience exciting and meaningful for our customers, while allowing brands to have a deeper engagement that resonates with today’s savvy shoppers,” said Kishore Thota, Director, Customer Experience & Marketing, Amazon India.

The launch comes at an opportune time for customers seeking to shop during the ongoing Amazon Great Indian Festival. Through Amazon Live, Amazon India aims to connect the influencers with customers at scale, enabling them to make informed purchases,” he added.

Even after making investments of $6.5 billion in India over the last eight years, profitability remains elusive for the e-commerce major in the country with negative EBITDA margins of 5-10 percent, according to a recent report by brokerage firm Bernstein.

The company also faces immense competitive pressure in the fast-growing categories like smartphones and apparel, a weaker value proposition in 'new' business areas like social commerce and quick commerce, limited traction in tier II and III cities, and an unfavourable regulatory environment for foreign retailers.

Meanwhile, deep discounts and mega ad spends by Flipkart and Amazon have spurred a two- to five-fold demand spike, compared to business-as-usual (BAU) days in categories like smartphones, fashion, home furnishings and personal care in the first week of the festive sales season, according to industry players.

The first tranche of the festive season sales of Amazon and Flipkart started on September 23 and will last till September 30. With a gap of 2-3 days between every phase, they typically organise more such weeks of offers and deals till Diwali.

Driven by smartphone sales, e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, and others have recorded cumulative sales worth Rs 24,500 crore ($3.5 billion) in the first four days of the festive season, growing 30 percent over the same period last year, according to management consulting firm Redseer.

This rush to buy phones is being driven by offers on Apple iPhone 12, Apple iPhone 13, and OnePlus phones even as mobile phone sales saw a 10X jump during the period compared to business as usual (BAU) days.

Fashion has also been one of the drivers of the festive rush on e-commerce platforms – an estimated Rs 5,500 crore worth of apparel, footwear, and fashion accessories were sold in the first four days. This was a jump of 4.5 times over BAU days.