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:
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.
