February 2016 saw Amazon India announcing the launch of Amazon Tatkal — a studio cum registration centre on wheels, to cover various cities and add smaller merchants. Immediately after the announcement, rival Flipkart launched a similar service called Spotlist.
According to a report in the Business Standard: Both the services are focused on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the companies believe they will help gain more sellers from smaller Tier-II and Tier-III centers.
Amazon launched its pilot project in Jalandhar and Ludhiana almost a month ago and is preparing for it to be taken forward to bigger cities, including New Delhi and Kozikode. The e-tailer says the Amazon Tatkal van would traverse the country, engaging with thousands of entrepreneurs, artisans, manufacturers and sellers and help them sell online on the spot.
Spotlist is a similar a cataloguing and listing service targeted at SMEs, artisans and other businesses across the country.
“It will give instant access to list their products on Flipkart in a timely and professional manner. Spotlist enables sellers to avail these processes conveniently on their premises. It aims to provide sellers with infrastructure and training that are vital to improving their visibility and competitiveness on Flipkart’s e-commerce platform. Spotlist enables sellers to catalogue their selection in the shortest possible time,” said a statement released by the company.
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.
Amazon invested in establishing infrastructure, opening new fulfillment centers and technology advancement due to which its losses increased to Rs 3,572 crore
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