BENGALURU: Amazon India may start offering music, movie and video streaming services later this year besides debuting its Prime subscription service as it looks to expand offerings in the country, key to its global expansion strategy. The Jeff Bezos-led company is currently evaluating the feasibility of such services while building up a content library, which would be a critical element of Amazon Prime.
The Indian unit of the Seattle-based ecommerce company has tasked Nitesh Kripalani, former executive vicepresident at Multi Screen Media — which runs Sony Entertainment Channels — to get access to "digital content", according to a person familiar with the development.
"We are working towards it... difficult to say by when as Nitesh has just been brought in... but he will soon start talks with content providers," said a second executive aware of the discussions. "The biggest limitation is the slow Internet speeds. So, we are looking at how we can bridge this. Hopefully, we should have some of these offerings available sometime in the second half of the year."
Amazon India's push into the entertainment space marks an important step in the fiercely competitive ecommerce space where participants are looking to position themselves as a central gateway for customers — from everyday purchases such as grocery and diapers to music, books and movies.
The company is yet to appoint an executive who will roll out Prime in India, but it has started strengthening its logistics and shipping team and is expected to more than double this to 14,000 people by July from the current 6,000.
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