Two of the biggest online market places in India – Flipkart and Amazon.in are taking a step further to get more sellers to their platform. Flipkart has announced the nation-wide launch of a new cataloguing and listing service dubbed as Spotlist. The new initiative aims to bring sellers including SMEs, artisans and other businesses with instant access to list their products on Flipkart.
Spotlist aims to provide sellers with the infrastructure and training that are key to improve their visibility and competitiveness on Flipkart. The service enables sellers to catalogue their selection in the shortest possible time. Cataloguing partners will travel via Spotlist-branded vans/bikes to seller locations and these vehicles will be equipped with the necessary cataloguing tools and technologies, including cameras, half-mannequins or photo-boxes. Spotlist technicians will help sellers to list their products instantly following the shoot. Flipkart said that the Spotlist initiative has been launched in Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, and Hyderabad since November and over 1000 sellers across categories have availed of this service while close to 10,000 products have been catalogued.
Meanwhile, Amazon.in has launched a service called as Tatkal which enables SMBs to get online and sell on Amazon.in, in less than 60 minutes. A studio-on-wheel offering, Amazon Tatkal offers an array of launch services including registration, imaging and cataloguing services, as well as basic seller training mechanisms. The service which is starting in Delhi will visit seller-dense pockets across multiple cities in the country and engage with local businesses over the next several months. The company representatives will educate sellers on the benefits of selling online, introduce them to the specialized seller services offered by Amazon.in including innovations like Easy Ship, Fulfilment by Amazon as well as Global Selling and launch interested sellers on the Amazon platform, helping them with on-the-spot imaging and cataloguing tasks.
Talking about the concept, Gopal Pillai, Director & GM, Seller Services, Amazon India said,
Our conversations with hundreds of SMBs reveal that there is a high level of interest among them to get online and start selling, but they are unable to overcome perception barriers of the process being time consuming, tedious and complex. As a result many interested sellers tend to put off onboarding tasks. As always, we worked backwards from seller needs and conceptualized Amazon Tatkal. We believe this initiative will help sellers to overcome these constraints, get them onboard, and start selling on the Amazon platform with speed and ease. A number of sellers on Amazon.in witnessed a growth of 250% (YOY) last year.
While Flipkart currently has over a 100,000 sellers on its platform, Amazon has around 65,000 Indian sellers on its portal and globally, it has around two million active sellers.