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Amazon has this morning launched an e-commerce site in India called Junglee.com.
The platform will allow Amazon and third party sellers to vend 12 million products by over 14,000 Indian and global brands including books, electrical products, clothes jewellery and home products. The site sells Kindles but is not currently listing Kindle e-books.
On the website, Amazon tells customers: “Junglee has an ambitious vision of organizing selection and buying choices and it’s day one for us. We are relentlessly focused on adding selection and making it convenient for customers to find, discover, and shop anything using our service.”
However, it adds: “You cannot buy directly from Junglee. Junglee puts you in touch with sellers by directing you to their websites, displaying their customer service phone numbers and providing their physical store locations to help you buy the products directly from sellers.” Amazon.com is listed as a third party seller on the site.
The site is currently in beta form, and named Junglee, which means "of the jungle", because, Amazon said: “We appreciate how overwhelming it can be to navigate the jungle of products, brands, sellers, shipping options, and payment methods, and make informed purchase decisions."
Amit Agarwal, Amazon.com vice president, said: “We are excited to give customers in India a single online starting point where they can shop a wide selection of products sold by local and global retailers, and make informed purchasing decisions.”
Last month Amazon announced it was setting up its first warehouses in India, which the company said would make shipments faster and cheaper.
Amazon’s entrance into the Indian market has been revealed a day after the Seattle-based company announced a sharp fall in profits in its financial results, revealing net income in its fourth quarter plummeted by 58% to $177m, compared with net income of $416m in the same period in 2010. It recorded the loss in profit despite increasing revenue by 35% in the fourth quarter to $17.43bn (£11.06bn) compared with $12.95bn in fourth quarter 2010.