India’s e-commerce giants haven’t given up on livestreaming

Amazon India will run more than 1,000 livestreams on its app during its ongoing Great India Festival while rival Flipkart has introduced a TikTok-like video shopping interface called Vibes.

Context

• The spectacular success of livestreaming in China – where it has become a $180bn business – has yet to be replicated in many other countries. And plenty have tried.
• One investor explained to Rest of World that funding for Indian livestreaming start-ups dried up thanks to a combination of high customer acquisition costs, low stickiness as users moved on, and low average revenues per user (ARPU).
• The average transaction size in India is around a quarter of China’s ($4 vs $15).
• Earlier this year YouTube closed its Shopping feature in India; observers suggest the fact consumers were directed to a third-party website to purchase was an issue for users.

Why Indian livestreaming matters

Indian consumers are enthusiastic online buyers – a recent report forecast that e-commerce platforms will achieve 20% growth in sales this festive season, with 140 million people shopping online. 

So, with the China example in mind, there’s a belief that livestreaming could yet become a significant channel if the right recipe can be found. E-commerce players like Amazon and Flipkart are arguably better positioned to do that than video-platforms like YouTube.

Takeaways 

• The chief financial officer of social network ShareChat says Indian platforms need to be better at turning ad impressions into sales; the same online shopping ad that may fetch $3 to $6 per conversion in China only makes about 50 cents to $1.50 in India.
• Amazon has onboarded 300 influencers to host livestreams during the Festival and reports its most popular livestream had close to 500,000 unique viewers.
• Amazon livestreams showcase a wide variety of products and price points and it is using these to encourage existing customers to explore new categories.

Key quote

“We’re really interested in building this property for the long term, and the best indicator is repeat engagement” – Kishore Thota, director of customer experience and marketing at Amazon India. 

Sourced from Rest of World, Logistics Insider