How India contributed to make Amazon Prime as fastest growing service

Amazon Prime, an Amazon membership service, which was launched in India last year, has grown almost five times since the beginning of this year. The growth is the fastest among such subscribers for the Seattle-headquartered company across the globe.

"More Prime members joined in India than any other country in the first year," said Greg Greeley, vice president, Amazon Prime, during his India visit earlier this week. "It also had more people watching Prime videos in the first year than in any other country."

However, Amazon refused to disclose its Prime subscriber numbers.

Amazon launched its Prime subscription service in India at an introductory price of Rs 499 and continues to offer in the same price.

When the e-commerce platform launched its Prime service in July 2016, it included unlimited one-day and two-day delivery with no minimum order size and early access to some deals on Amazon, as well as some Prime-members only deals.

However, other benefits available like Amazon Video and Amazon Music were missing from the offerings.

In December last year, the company announced the launch of Amazon Prime Video in India. Since then, the company has been working to focus on the India-specific content.

In August this year, the streaming giant has announced three new reality formats for its Indian subscribers, out of which two are centered on local stand-up comedy while one a musical talent competition.

The new three shows include a travel comedy show ‘Jestination Unknown’, a music reality show ‘The Remix’ and a comedy show ‘Comic Kaun’ to discover comedy talents across the country.

As the battle for online video and music streaming is getting intensified in India, Amazon Prime’s rival Netflix is also flexing muscles with contents specific for Indian audience.

A few months ago, Netflix announced two new original series – ‘Selection Day’ and ‘Again’ from India.

With original content and partnership with leading bollywood stars, the content war between Amazon Prime and Netflix in India has reached another level. While Netflix had sealed a deal with Red Chillies Entertainment for both his existing and upcoming titles, Amazon Prime won the streaming rights for Salman Khan’s past and future movies.

Besides Netflix and Amazon, home-grown production company – Balaji Telefilms is also planning to produce content exclusively for its digital subscription platform, ALT Balaji.