Amazon India launches mobile app for sellers

BENGALURU: Amazon India has launched a mobile app for those who use its platform to sell goods, opening up a host of tools to help the sellers efficiently manage businesses on the go, using smartphones.
"Over time, many of our sellers will only have a mobile phone to do business. So we want to go mobile only, not mobile first," Amit Deshpande, a director and general manager at Amazon India, told ET."This app allows our sellers to update inventory, confirm orders, respond to customer queries, access Amazon support (and) estimate the profitability of the items before they are listed for sale — all on the go." Amazon has built the app inhouse.
Rival Snapdeal, which has about 100,000 sellers, already offers a mobile seller app, which it launched in last July. The SoftBank-backed company claims that more than 30% of its sellers use the app actively. Earlier this month, Snapdeal launched its 'Scan and Sell' feature, automating the process of listing products for sale on the mobile.
At Flipkart, India's largest online marketplace, works are in the final stages to launch its own seller mobile app, sources with knowledge of the matter told ET. "Pilot testing is on," one executive said.
According to Amazon, globally, sellers using the Amazon Seller App have reported that they have a 30% faster response time to customer inquiries and grow listed offers nearly 10 times quicker. India is the third country after the US and Japan where Amazon has launched the seller app.
While e-commerce is still in its infancy in India, mobile business is fast becoming a key driver of growth. According to the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), India's internet users totaled more than 300 million in December 2014, with close to 60% of them accessing the net from a mobile connection.
"India is soon going to become one of the biggest markets in terms of new smartphone users as most first-time internet users are jumping directly to mobile platforms," a Morgan Stanley report on Indian e-commerce said. "Further, smartphone adoption has improved because of lower handset prices and wider availability. Smartphones sold for below $200 account for 81% of the total."
According to the telecom industry regulator, more than 259 million subscribers in India accessed the internet as of June 2014. Of them, 240 million were wireless subscribers and 19 million. Added to that, India now has about 42 million third-generation mobile connections that offer faster data downloads.
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