Tier II cities are catching up with metros in e-commerce, says Amazon

Online marketplace Amazon said it is witnessing tremendous growth in its ecommerce business from Tier-II cities, including this industrial city. The ecommerce portal has witnessed tremendous growth in Tier II cities, reaching 50 per cent, from the 36 per cent a year ago, Amazon.in Director-Category Management Noor Patel told reporters in Coimbatore. With a total selection standing now at more than 25 million products across hundreds of categories, the company has the largest book store in the country across online and offline formats, he said.

To cite an example, the demand for books from Coimbatore went up by almost 200 per cent over the last one year, indicating significant increase in tier two cities, he said adding Indian fictions was the most popular in the city. Similarly, Amazon has witnessed over 100 per cent growth in daily sales in the music category over the last year, Patel said.

Another "surprise" increase was in musical instruments and profession audio store, which has seen a growth of 20 to 25 per cent growth every month, since its inception in November 2014. Tamil Nadu contributed 10 per cent of the demand in musical instruments store nationally, with wind instruments getting great traction from Coimbatore, he said.

Tamil music store was launched in September 2014 and since then, this selection had grown from 1,000 titles to over 2,300 titles, he said. The company has already taken steps to reduce the delivery time, with opening of fulfilling centres in 12 major cities, including Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Ludhiana and Pune, Patel said adding that if necessary, it would open more centres.

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