Flipkart Videos to be Walmart's new wishlist; Amazon Prime to face stiff competition?

With Amazon's Prime Video gaining popularity among Indian consumers, e-commerce giant Flipkart is also launching a series of technology-driven initiatives to grab their next 200 million online consumers.

The ideas include the launch of a Hindi version of the app and 'Flipkart videos' which would culminate a range of movies, shows, web, and entertainment series. With a view to compete with Amazon and a yet-to-be-launched e-commerce website of Reliance industries, Flipkart is likely to provide 'focused product suggestions' to customers based on their requirements.

In an interview with Business Standard, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO of Flipkart Group said that in the past 10 years, the company's vision is to create India specific tech solutions. The ideas would help to roll out the needs of the next 200 million users in India.

The Walmart-owned business also has plans to launch the app in other regional languages such as Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali. This is the first 'audio-visual guided navigation' being used for Hindi and other languages to expand consumers. About 90 percent of new Internet users in India are native language speakers from Tier 2 and beyond cities, said Jeyandran Venugopal, head consumer experience and platform at Flipkart in the same interview with Business Standard.

The company is trying to hold an edge over its competitors by giving premium content with free-for-all video streaming.  It is also partnering with various players to get content.

The viewership of online video content has witnessed a drastic increase since the internet boom in 2016 and statistics suggest that video content and entertainment series play a crucial role in connecting consumers to go online and experience the world of e-commerce. Flipkart believes that making good content available to the newbie e-commerce users can boost the number of people visiting the site on a daily basis. 

The launch of 'Flipkart Ideas' allows customers to restrict their range of products according to their needs. It would be integrated within the existing Flipkart app, both in Android and iOS versions.

Bringing content from over 30 brands and 400 influencers associated with Flipkart, in various videos, GIFs, images, stories, quizzes and polls formats, under one umbrella will give the power of online shopping in the customer's hand. Now, they can make better purchasing decisions and also get them timely and researched information while shopping.

With the rise of internet-savvy public, especially in Tier-2 cities, Flipkart said that the Flipkart Ideas' focus is on creating a fan base out of the new section of consumers who would like to see their day-to-day offline experience trascend into online shopping and this is how the company wants to  target its next 200 million internet users.