Amazon Prime in India – To join or not?

Amazon announced this July that they are launching their Prime subscription service in India, offering among others, free one day and two day deliveries at no extra costs. Subscription rate is Rs.999 per year, but for early birds, the offer stands at Rs.499 per year. So what is the difference between Amazon’s signature subscription service in India and in US. Here is a closer look:

Features	US	India
Free trial	30 days	60 days
Free 2 day delivery	Yes	Yes
Free 1 day delivery	No	Yes
Video services	Yes	Not available yet
Music streaming	Yes	No
Amazon Drive	Yes	No
Early access to deals	Yes	Yes
Free eBooks	Yes	No

Reference:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DBYBNEE?_encoding=UTF8&ref=nav_menu_tryprime_pc

https://www.amazon.in/gp/prime/pipeline/landing?ie=UTF8&ref_=nav_menu_redirect_ms3_pc

Let us do a detailed analysis. On the Free delivery aspect, considering that a two day shipping will cost you Rs.80 per order and an one day shipping cost is Rs.100, it is worth considering if you order more than 10 items (@Rs.999/year). Now, this is considering that you would always want a two/one day delivery. If you are pretty comfortable with the standard shipping speed, Prime is a luxury on the shipping parameter alone.

Amazon says that Prime video will come soon to India. Now, to judge a video streaming service is based on the content it provides. We can assume that the content spread will not be as large as provided in US. And coming to India specific TV series availability, most of them should be there on the Youtube channels. So how much exclusive content Amazon can provide will determine if a potential prime member decides to join just based on the Video services alone.

Another aspect is 30 minute early access to deals. Having previously worked for a smartphone maker, I can assume that this will be pretty awesome for potential deal hunters. And I can see many folks thinking to join prime just for early access to deals.

There are other features which are provided in US and not in India. These may not be really important to Indian customers, but could have added that extra bit to sweeten the deal.

We should also not forget the Flipkart had introduced a similar subscription service, but the Prime branding and Amazon’s marketing should help it garner more subscribers than the competition.

On a closing note, it is interesting to see that the ecommerce space in India is maturing going by the way a top player is confident to offer free one day shipping. It will be interesting to see if options like Prime can convert the bulk of Indian shoppers to online.

Recruiterbox – Hire on cloud

I recently saw the Recruiterbox application, which helps SMBs simplify their hiring. Sign up is free and it lets you do a lot of stuff with your free account. So I played around a bit and here is what I think.

About the application

Recruiterbox helps SMBs in their hiring process by managing the hiring on the cloud. The company targets SMBs but bigger organizations like Groupon has used them successfully in the past. Most small organizations and startups will not have recruiting software or a HR department to help them with hiring and the founders or the team members manage it via excel. This is inefficient and when the candidate numbers are high can lead to loss of data and in turn loose out on a future employee.

Recruiterbox solves this by hosting the entire hiring process on cloud. Team members can invite others in their team to participate in the hiring process. Different stages can be assigned to different team members, feedback noted and shared between team members and promote candidates across stages. A lot of this can be done with a free account, making it easier for teams to evaluate the app before committing.

I played around, creating a mock opening and going through different stages in recruiting. All this, without going through a user’s guide or watching help video. This also is a plus point, considering that team members working in smaller organizations will not have a lot of time to spare to understand new software.

A cool feature

The coolest feature of the application was the way the application manages resumes. Bulk upload of resumes is possible and it can also preview resumes in the candidate page. Application can parse contact details from resumes and also search key words with in the resume, making shortlisting easier. These set of features is sure to make the life of any hiring team very easy.

An improvement

Different steps to create an opening are laid out in a neat way here. Refer the picture.

However, adding users/inviting new users step can be combined with the Manage Stages step. One obvious advantage here is the reduction in the number of screens that a user needs to navigate before an opening is created. Another point is, once the user has passed the Add User step, he/she can’t come back to add new users or can add new users in Manage Stages.

All in all, Recruiterbox is a very handy application for all of you out there taking time out of your busy work schedule to hire your next employee.