Why Amazon Is Yet To Capture The Indian Market..and Mindset

Shantan Rao observes that in the US, people rely a lot on Amazon. But, on the other hand, the Indian market and mindset have not yet warmed up this idea.

But even in urban areas, cities and universities where internet connectivity is at an all time high, ecommerce of the scale that Amazon promises…is yet to take off. Some reasons:

1) Large scale proliferation of used book vendors on the streets.

2) Lack of secure or trusted or reliable ecommerce payment channels.

3) Slow traction from partner banks in providing support to ecommerce payment products

4) Apathy to books: fundamentally, the Indian community has been built on a system of rote learning in the classroom. Students are happy to read their class-notes, and write exams. They get good grades. And they are happy. There is a lack of appetite for true and deep knowledge. And this shows in the lack of interest to actually search and buy books.

5) Lack of Indian retailers: Few bookshops in india have a full fledged web commerce presence. So most customers have to have the books/items shipped from global warehouses [ i am guessing that most r in usa]. This adds to high cost. So people would rather buy the books themselves.

6) Sharing: Indian mindsets are fundamentally built on the culture of sharing. Students share books/materials. And encourage reuse of books/materials by handing them over to their juniors once they use them. There is hardly any reaction to the editions getting old. Students just like to get the crux of the book.

Read the entire article here.

Image Source: diego hernandez