Amazon And Flipkart Rolled Out Studio On Wheels For Sellers

On Wednesday, E-commerce giants, Amazon India and Flipkart announced the launch of their studio on wheels services, in order to engage with small and medium businesses and help them sell their products online. Online marketplace portals are going all out to not only add more sellers to their platforms but also competing aggressively with rivals in doing so. A few hours after e-commerce major Amazon India announced the launch of Amazon Tatkal, a studio cum registration centre on wheels, to cover various cities and add smaller merchants, the rival Flipkart also launched a similar service named ‘Spotlist’.

Amazon Tatkal, its studio-on-wheels solution, offers sellers facilities like registration, imaging and cataloguing services, as well as basic seller training. Amazon India said that the service enables SMBs to get online and sell on Amazon.in, in less than 60 minutes. Starting with New Delhi, trained company representatives will traverse the country to educate sellers on the benefits of specialised seller services offered by Amazon, the company said.

"Our conversations with hundreds of SMBs reveal that there is a high level of interest among them to get online and start selling, but they are unable to overcome perception barriers of the process being time consuming, tedious and complex," said Gopal Pillai, Director and GM, Seller Services, Amazon India in a press statement. "We believe this initiative will help sellers to overcome these constraints, get them on board, and start selling on the Amazon platform with speed and ease," he added.



Flipkart Spotlist, its cataloguing and listing service for sellers, enables small businesses and artisans to list their products from their premises. Cataloguing partners will travel on Spotlist-branded vans and bikes to seller locations, equipped with cataloguing tools and technologies, including cameras, half-mannequins, and photo boxes to help sellers list their products instantly following the shoot, the company said. Spotlist enabled cities to include Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, and Hyderabad. The company said that over a thousand sellers have availed of Spotlist, and close to 10,000 products have been catalogued through the service. Flipkart said that it is extending Spotlist to the freelance wedding and party photographers, who can register as cataloguing partners and open a new revenue stream.