Amazon India is looking to expand its product offering and selection by looking more closely at increasing its range of private label goods. And fashion and household goods are expected to be the key verticals where they will be selling more of their own inventory to Indian shoppers. When ever Amazon looks to sell more products itself, that’s an increase in competition for third-party (3P) sellers.
Amazon India vice president Manish Tiwary has said: “We have selection gaps in every category… our large vendors on the private labels side, we’ll keep on filling the gaps using them. As far as the private label part is concerned, it’s largely driven globally. The fact is they have such a huge assortment. If I can’t find the selection here, I do go to them.”
And in clarifying the position:
We do not comment on speculation around what we may or may not do in the future. However, we are a customer-centric company and our goal is to provide the widest selection to the maximum number of customers. We will therefore continue to evaluate any need gaps in selection that may be served by launching specific products in that category to help achieve this goal of widest selection.
– Amazon India spokesperson
So which categories are important? So far, both rivals Flipkart and Amazon have targeted categories such as fashion. Both recently launched private label brands for the key smartphone business too, which remarkably represents well over 60% of overall ecommerce sales in India. When Flipkart launched a smartphone under its ‘Billion’ brand created by founder and chairman Sachin Bansal, notably Amazon followed fast with a brand called Tenor.
Amazon has so far launched five private label brands including Symbol and Myx in the clothing and fashion arena. There’s Solimo for homewares and small furniture items and home appliances, and Tenor is a smartphones outlet and brand. And don’t forget about AmazonBasics which launched over in India last year.
