Amazon’s Prime subscription service grew faster in India in its first year than in any other geography in its history, according to Amazon Founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos.
Prime, which now commands over 100 million members globally, has also grown rapidly in India, Bezos said in a letter to shareholders. “Prime selection in India now includes more than 40 million local products from third-party sellers, and Prime Video is investing in India original video content in a big way, including two recent premiers and over a dozen new shows in production,” he added.
Amazon had launched its Prime Video service in India in 2016 to woo customers with the latest movies and original content to build stickiness with the platform. The Seattle-based company has been locked in an intense battle with Netflix in the streaming business, and Flipkart in the e-commerce segment in the Indian market.
The latest shareholder letter from Bezos highlighted that India remains the most crucial market for the e-commerce company outside of its home market U.S., especially after Amazon lost out in China to Alibaba. Bezos has so far invested $5 billion to grow the business in India and indicated that he is ready to pump in more.
Amazon.in is the fastest growing marketplace in India, and the most visited site on both desktop and mobile, Bezos said in the letter citing data from market analytics firms comScore and SimilarWeb. The company’s mobile shopping app is the “most downloaded shopping app in India in 2017”, he added.
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