Amazon launches online service in India, Junglee.com

Amazon's finally setting up shop in India and they're calling it Junglee.com. The e-commerce site will focus on helping Indian customers find products available in India, even if their retailers do not sell them online on their own sites. Of course, global brands will also be available. The site also features sellers that normally sell on Amazon, but have a global shipping policy, so will ship the products you order to India. The site still seems to be in beta phase; so, you can't actually buy products directly from the site yet. It connects you to Amazon.com, the retailer's site or other seller sites for products you wish to buy. They haven't mentioned when the site will move out of beta. Users will find 1.2 crore products on the site at launch, which include companies like Homeshop18, UniverCell, Hidesign, Gitanjali, The Bombay Store, Fabindia, Bata India Limited, Dabur Uveda, Microsoft India Store, Reebok, and of course, Amazon.com.

Junglee directly integrates with online and offline retailers to list their entire selection of products available in India and uses Amazon’s search technology to make it convenient for customers to navigate the selection and find what they are looking for quickly. Junglee also uses the same recommendation engine technology as Amazon.com, displaying the “Most Frequently Viewed Products” or “Customers Who Viewed This Product Also Viewed" to help customers discover products. Junglee aggregates detailed product information, including customer reviews, price, and shipping speed across multiple sources, including Amazon.com. Customers can write reviews of the products they buy as well as share products they'd like or have bought on Facebook and Twitter.

In the process of launching Junglee, Amazon is also advertising to Indian retailers to become sellers on the site. Indian retailers can now sign up for Amazon Product Ads to list their products on Junglee.com and advertise their product selection to drive targeted customer traffic to their websites and physical stores at zero cost. To get their products on to Junglee, retailers have to sign up for an account, upload their product catalog and Junglee takes care of the rest.