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.