Amazon Looking to Woo a Potential 100 Million New E-Shoppers Coming Online With Hindi Marketplace

Amazon India today announced the launch of its marketplace in Hindi taking on the likes of Flipkart, Snapdeal and others. With this move, Amazon is looking to woo a potential 100 million new shoppers coming online. At the moment, websites and apps of Walmart-backed Flipkart and other players like Snapdeal, Paytm Mall and ShopClues are available only in English and the desi avatar of Amazon will allow it to capitalise on the vast, untapped market of Hindi-speaking customers.

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“Launch of the Hindi shopping experience is a significant step towards bringing the next 100 million customers online. This first Indian language launch will enable crores of Hindi-preferring customers across India to shop in their preferred language,” Amazon India Vice President, Category Management Manish Tiwary told reporters here. He added that the move would also help the US-based company tap into new customers, who will come online during the festive season sales, according to PTI.

According to industry studies, the Hindi Internet user base is likely to outgrow the English user base by 2021 and along with Marathi and Bengali users, will drive volume growth. This could be critical for the Indian e-commerce sector that is forecast to grow to USD 200 billion in size in a decade, as per industry reports.

Interestingly, Flipkart had announced the acquisition of Liv.ai, an artificial intelligence-led speech recognition start-up last month for an undisclosed amount. It had said the move was aimed at catering to the next wave of growth of Internet users that is coming from tier II cities and beyond. Snapdeal too, in 2015, had run a pilot for a few months to offer its marketplace in 14 Indian languages.