New Delhi, October 13
Kishore Biyani-led Future Group today entered into a strategic alliance with e-commerce player Amazon India to sell its merchandise exclusively online. The alliance comes days after Biyani, who is known as a pioneer of Indian retail chains, had criticised Flipkart and other e-commerce retailers in India for under-cutting the market and selling products at even below the cost price, saying that it would hurt other retail channels.

The American e-commerce giant founder Jeff Bezos had met Biyani during his recent visit to India. Future Group’s partnership with Amazon will start with fashion merchandise and eventually extend to all categories. Its current portfolio of over 40 brands, including Lee Cooper, Converse, Indigo Nation, Scullers or Jealous21 will be retailed exclusively online through the Amazon.in platform.

Future-Amazon partnership is the latest in a series of such moves by traditional Indian merchants. Tata Group’s electronics chain Croma had signed a similar agreement with Snapdeal.com last month.

The alliance announced today will leverage strong product knowledge, extensive brand portfolio and sourcing base of Future Group, and the e-commerce platform, customer base and reach of Amazon.in.

Amazon India will also assist Future Group accelerate new product development in categories that are currently not served by traditional retailers, the two firms said. Future Group operates some of India’s biggest retail chains including Big Bazaar, eZone, Brand Factory and Home Town. “The bottomline in each of our retail success stories is ‘know your customer’. Insights into the soul of Indian consumers - how they operate, think, dream and live - helps us innovate and create functionally differentiating products and experiences.

“Partnership with Amazon, which obsesses to be earth’s most customer-centric company, will enable us to leverage their strengths, investments and innovations in technology to reach out to wider set of consumers across India,” Future Group said.

Commenting on the tie-up, Biyani said: “Partnership with Amazon, which obsesses to be earth’s most customer-centric company, will enable us to leverage their strengths, investments and innovations in technology to reach out to wider set of consumers across India.” Amazon India country manager Amit Agarwal said: “We are excited to collaborate, leverage each other’s unique strengths and serve customers across India. The product portfolio of Future Group, their innate understanding of the Indian consumer mindset and our ability to serve and deliver a convenient, easy, trusted and reliable delivery experience to a nationwide set of customers is a win-win for all.”

Amazon will also partner Future Group brands in promoting the existing and new brands in markets, explore co-branding opportunities and accelerate new product development in categories which are currently not served by retailers. The companies will also explore synergies in areas such as distribution network, customer acquisition and cross promotions.

Q: What are Amazon’s plans and investments for Indian market?

A: In July, 2014, Amazon.com announced additional investments to the tune of $2 billion into Amazon India. We will continue to think big, innovate and raise the bar for customers in India by expanding selection in existing categories and adding new categories that will delight them.

We are committed to ensure 100% purchase protection for our customers so that they can benefit from a safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient electronic payments and cash on delivery, easy returns, Amazon’s customer service with 24x7 support, and a globally recognised and comprehensive purchase protection provided by Amazon’s A-to-Z guarantee.

Our strategy for Amazon.in is the same as our global vision to be India’s most customer-centric company by giving customers more of what they want – low prices, vast selection, fast and reliable delivery, and a trusted and convenient experience – and provide sellers a world-class e-commerce platform.

Q. How do you compare online shopping with brick and mortar formats?

A: E-commerce in India is at a nascent stage in its evolution in India with significant potential to invent and create customer differentiation. In the developed markets as well, e-commerce is still a small size of the overall retail market. We believe there is a room for multiple formats and players, and most importantly for innovation.

Among other things, e-commerce offers ease and convenience of shopping for millions of products — all at a single place — for customers. The growth is at an inflection point. With increasing internet penetration, both broadband and smartphones, there is an interest and demand from mini metros and smaller towns across the country. We see as a tremendous opportunity and are very excited by it.

Our total selection across 100s of categories is now in excess of 18 million products. We already have the largest selection across books, music, video games, toys, home & kitchen, sports, fitness & outdoors, luggage & backpacks, fashion jewellery, beauty products, men’s innerwear and pet supplies. We are seeing growth across the board in all of our departments. While books, consumer electronics, baby products continue to do well, shoes, watches, apparel, home & kitchen, fashion jewellery are growing very fast too.

Q.What are the trends in online shopping?

A: In the recent months, we have observed several trends that will have a bearing on the landscape of Indian e-commerce industry.

Rise of mobile commerce: In India, the mobile internet traffic now outweighs PC traffic. With increasing penetration of smartphones, India is set to be a massive market for m-commerce. In 2014, the marketing strategies for e-commerce companies will increasingly be tailored to suit the rising adoption of smartphones, social media and improving customer experience across touch points and platforms.

Over 40% of our traffic comes from mobile devices, thus we want our customers to be able to do everything they do today on their PCs from their mobiles while searching and shopping online, be it through a browser or an app. The unique capabilities of mobile such as location awareness, camera and voice will transform shopping experience dramatically. Amazon recently launched Flow in the US. It allows customer to quickly search for a product using his camera. Payment over mobile devices is another area where a lot of innovative work is being done.

Getting SMEs to go online: Considering that there is a vast number of entrepreneurial SMEs who have never sold online but have great product selection and are motivated to grow, we work hard to help them succeed online. We started with over 100 sellers and today this base has grown to more than 11,500 sellers.

Q. What is the size of the market?

A: E-commerce is at a very early stage of its evolution in India. In the US, we say it’s ‘Day 1’. In India, it’s probably minute 1 of ‘Day 1’! A lot more innovation lies ahead of us compared to what we have seen over the past decade.

Q. What is the scale of Amazon operations in India?

A: We completed 16+ months of operations in India and have received a fabulous response from both customers and sellers. We launched in India with two categories — books and movies & TV shows —and in 16+ months, our total selection now stands at more than 18 million products across 32 departments making Amazon.in India’s largest online store. We launched the large appliances store in time 
for Diwali.

In terms of services, we were the first one in India to introduce premium guaranteed delivery services, including the ‘One-Day Delivery’ service for items fulfilled by Amazon. Within a short time, we have been able to make available over 325,000 products for the next day delivery across hundreds of pin codes in India.

We use the extensive Indian Postal Services (IPS) network to service over 19,000 pincodes through 140,000 post offices across all 35 states and union territories in India. More than 45% of orders on Amazon.in are coming from outside of the top eight metros.

New Delhi, October 13
Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) today posted a better-than-expected 1.7% rise in second quarter net profit, helped by strong growth in refining margins which neutralised slump in oil and gas earnings.

Net profit in July-September at Rs 5,972 crore, or Rs 20.3 per share, was 1.7% higher than Rs 5,873 crore, or Rs 20 a share earning in the same period last fiscal, the company said.

RIL earned $8.3 for turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel in Q2 as compared to $7.7 a barrel gross refining margin a year ago.

Turnover dropped 4.3% to Rs 113,396 crore due to lower crude oil prices and volumes mainly in the refining and oil and gas business. Exports too dipped 14.7% to Rs 66,065 crore as against Rs 77,428 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Pre-tax profit from refinery business jumped 18.5% to Rs 3,844 crore even though revenue dropped 5.9% to Rs 103,590 crore on slump in international oil prices and lower processing.

RIL chairman and managing director Mukesh D Ambani said refining and petrochemical businesses delivered robust results, outperforming regional industry benchmarks.

“We expect to create significant value for our stakeholders over the next 12-18 months as we complete our large investment programme across energy and consumer businesses. These projects will propel the next phase of growth for India and Reliance,” he said. — PTI

New Delhi, October 13
India has pitched for greater international policy co-ordination to ensure strong global growth and ring fence countries from risks to economic recovery.

Finance Secretary Arvind Mayaram has garnered support from the emerging market economies such as China and Indonesia while batting for the need to have greater International Policy coordination to deal with the negative spillovers.

BRIEFLY

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