500,000 people watched a live show! Amazon is focusing on live streaming in emerging markets

The success of China's live streaming sales has attracted worldwide attention. Many giants hope to "copy" this success to other markets, and Amazon is no exception. As India is a highly anticipated emerging market, Amazon has never relaxed its strategic deployment here. According to foreign media reports, Amazon has been vigorously promoting its live streaming e-commerce business in India .

In a statement at the beginning of the month, Amazon said that during the eight-week Indian promotion this month, more than 1,000 live broadcasts would be held on its app. Amazon also said at the time that it had invited 300 influential celebrities to host the live broadcasts. Subsequently, Amazon stated in public information that in the first week of the promotion, nearly 10% of visitors to the Amazon website ( Amazon.in) watched the live broadcast .

Kishore Thota, director of customer experience and marketing at Amazon India , said the company believes live streaming is more suitable for emerging markets such as India than mature markets; improved network connectivity and speeds will enable the company to make live streaming a priority business in 2023 .

However, live streaming e-commerce as a market segment has never really taken off in India , and many entrepreneurs and investors have failed to successfully tackle this "tough nut" .

According to data shared by startup intelligence platform TheKredible, in the past few years, India's live streaming startups have raised a total of US$90 million, but have basically either closed down or been acquired at unsatisfactory valuations , including Bulbul , backed by Sequoia Capital , and Simsim, owned by YouTube .

Sachin Bhatia, founder of Bulbul , believes that if e-commerce giants like Amazon or Flipkart had launched live streaming on their apps in 2020, the results would have been different. Video is not a priority for these giants, and if they had entered the video commerce space, it could have been a huge success in India. Just like Alibaba, which launched Taobao Live in 2016, it already had millions of local shoppers on its app.

According to foreign media reports on Amazon Live sales , unlike most online e-commerce startups that focus on low-priced goods, Amazon Live showcases a wide variety of products - from saris for 600 rupees (7 U.S. dollars) to gaming phones for 50,000 rupees (600 U.S. dollars). Kishore Thota This diversity of products allows Amazon to cater to a wider group of buyers. Amazon Live also uses its celebrity-led streaming to encourage existing customers to explore new categories.

Amazon also mentioned in the statement that the most popular live broadcast on the platform has nearly 500,000 viewers, but did not disclose the name of the product and the anchor . In the next 12 months, the top priority of the Amazon team headed by Kishore Thota is to make the live broadcast business have more users and views and increase the interaction between users and creators , because this will drive repeat purchases , and the repeat purchase rate is the best measure of business .

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