Amazon India set to meet sales target

BENGALURU|MUMBAI: Amazon’s India unit is on track to hit its internal sales target for the current year, with the ecommerce behemoth’s seller base clocking robust growth despite an overall slowdown in the economy, a top executive said.

Amit Agarwal, global senior vice president and country head, Amazon India, said the rising number of crorepati sellers on its platform was an indicator of the company’s growth, a metric similar to same store sales tracked by the offline retail industry. Crorepati sellers are merchants who have been able to earn more than Rs 1 crore selling products on Amazon in a year.

“I wouldn't say 2019 has been our fastest growing year ever, which would not be the case since we are growing in size every year...but we are growing much the same way we expected to. We don’t see any kind of negative impact. Also, ecommerce is really small, so I would be very hesitant to draw macro trends, as it constitutes 2% of the overall retail market," Agarwal said in an exclusive interview with ET.

In the US, for instance, ecommerce will make up for more than 12% of overall retail sales by next year, as per market research firm Statista.

Last week, Flipkart group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy had refuted multiple reports pointing to slower growth in the Indian ecommerce market in the first half of the year. The two big domestic online retail players are collectively expected to clock almost $4.8 billion in sales in the whole festive period, as per Forrester research.

About 80% of the sales will occur in the first five days — the period in which Flipkart and Amazon will hold their Big Billion Days and Great Indian Festival events, respectively, it said. The sales estimate for the period is $3.82 billion, a 36% rise over the $2.9 billion registered during the same time last year.

“We have pretty much met or exceeded our goals,” said Agarwal.