In an industry wide effort to boost the adoption of online shopping in India, all leading e-commerce players and Google India have introduced the ‘Great Online Shopping Festival’ slated for 12 December 2012. The idea is based on the concept of Cyber Monday,a marketing term coined by marketing companies in the US to persuade people to shop online.The festival will see participation from over 50 partners including leading eCommerce players, local classified, online travel sites and BFSI industry offering their best deals to customers all across India for 24 hours.The initiative focuses on reaching out to first time online buyers. Buyers can look forward to exciting discounts across a variety of product range for example users can enjoy discounts up to 40 per cent on smart phones and tablets, up to 70 per cent off on premium, branded footwear and home decor products, 20 per cent off on diamond and gold jewellery plus an additional discount of 12 per cent for first time buyers only on 12th December. Partnering sites will also offer express delivery and many other exciting offers like an opportunity to save up to Rs 10 lakh on real estate deals. Apart from great deals, buyers will also be able to enjoy free shipping across India and learn more about online shopping, various methods of payments and how safe and convenient it is to shop online.“The online shopping industry is estimated to be already over a 1.5 $ billion and with this initiative we want to reach out and promote online shopping to the first time buyers. The industry has done a lot to promote eCommerce adoption in India and we’re partnering with them to provide the users an easy access to all the deals and we look forward to great response from buyers all across India,” says Rajan Anandan, Managing Director & VP Sales and Operations at Google India.Mukesh Bansal, Co-Founder & CEO, Myntra.com talks about the company has lined up some really exciting offers from their portfolio of 500 brands. “(This initiative) will expand our reach beyond the 18 million Snapdeal subscribers and will help us attract and reach more buyers,” believes Kunal Bahl, Co-Founder and CEO, Snapdeal.com.E-commerce companies are understandably optimistic about how such a shopping festival would popularise online shopping as a convenient, trustworthy and exciting experience, which is already making waves across the country.The list of companies participating includes:eBay India, Flipkart.com, IndiatimesShopping.com, snapdeal.com, makemytrip.com, Yebhi.com, firstcry.com, Sulekha.com, Homeshop18.com, Croma, Gitanjali Group, Shine.com, Yatra.com, Zansaar, Fashionara, Caratlane, pepperfry.com, healthkart, Lenskart, Monster India, Bagskart, Jewelskart.com, Watchkart, Tradus, GoIbibo, Timtara, FreeCultr, BeStylish, Inkfruit, Myntra, Zovi, Fashionandyou, Quikr, Hoopos, Naaptol, Jabong, Firstcry, Goodlife, Babyoye, Hushbabies, PropTiger, Fabfurnish, IndiaProperty, People Interactive (Shaadi.com), BigRock, BharatMatrimony, Utsav Fashion, Right florists, Right Shopping, Gets Holidays, Jet Airways, Travelyaari, redBus, Indigo Airlines, Getit Infoservices
Read More
Today we are in the early days of cloud computing with organisations taking baby steps. But by 2020, one can expect IT to have transformed itself into a whole new avatar. The IT landscape will be drastically changed by then with cloud becoming an integral and permanent part of the enterprise computing infrastructure including organizational structures, roles, skills and operations.With the increasing popularity of cloud over the past couple of years, Gartner reports that a number of business are facing the heat from their customers to switch to the cloud for their operations to improve business performance, and also to keep up with the trends of what their clients are using. It further states, 60 per cent of server workloads will be virtualised by 2014. As business grows and the headcount increases, companies will need to take a relook at managing workplace operations. And with the workforce getting younger, old business operation methods have to be discarded. Manual and semi-automated processes will need to give way to standardised automated workflows in an increasingly global business environment. And when organisations want to tie in reduced total cost of ownership and paying for the services received, the cloud model reigns supreme.Deployment of an application or solution can be explored in varied ways through cloud-based services. Using cloud resources does not eliminate the costs associated with IT solutions, but realigns some costs and reduces others. A Gartner report on top 10 strategic technologies states that cloud-based, "on-demand" enterprise solutions, which include cloud-based workforce management solutions, are in growing demand. Workforce management vendors will now need to differentiate themselves by optimising the cost implications of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS models. Market leaders like Kronos are setting the stage for such a shift through their Workforce Ready and Workforce SaaS offering.The delivery model of SaaS for workforce management vendors, allows organisations to deploy workforce management products quickly and at ease, with minimal upfront investment. As the vendor is responsible for maintaining all hardware and network infrastructure, including application performance and availability, these models reduces the strain on company’s own IT departments.In addition, organisations can automatically update to the latest and advanced workforce management applications without having to perform expensive upgrades or purchase new software licenses.Workforce management solutions provided via the cloud cater to web or mobile access to workforce management applications that help organisations significantly reduce their workforce costs. These applications can take advantage of cost efficiencies such as shared components, and may also embrace the on-demand infrastructure of a cloud to provide additional services when needed.With the need for "anytime and anywhere" information demand increasing for mobile technologies, using cloud computing allows the user to access the information very easily at any place and at any time. It is predicted that by 2015, mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4:1 (Source: Gartner).The cloud also spells greater accountability for the solution provider. The earlier handoff point at the time of deployment would now go missing. In terms of IT infrastructure and application support the customers would now look for a quicker turn-around-time. This would need a change in orientation for businesses – from product to services. Through subscriptions and support the revenue stream would become fluid and be governed by SLAs.What worked yesterday, will not work today. The need for the cloud to make a transition is significant. From a mid-market company to a farmer, everyone would be able leverage technology. It’s a business need to transform in order to sustain. The game and the rules to play by will be undergoing a shift. And cloud, is the key to success in the future. (Ashok Saxena is the Head, India Engineering Centre, Kronos)
Read More
The online savvy, tech crazy metro male may be surfing the net looking for his gizmo of choice, but when it comes to actually buying the gadget, he prefers to go offline — to a store near him. The countless hours spent comparing, contemplating and finally zeroing in on a budget compatible gadget of choice happens at home while the shopkeeper (whose expertise is not solicited any more) just offers a bill and a smile perhaps, once our man has made his purchase. Incidentally, the latest Deloitte study points out online shopping is yet to pick up in India with only 15 per cent preferring to shop online.Google India’s tech shopper report, a pan India offline study conducted by Nielsen (on behalf of Google) which attempts to analyse the influence of the internet on consumers purchasing technology products, albeit in retail stores, becomes topical in this context. The idea was to observe how “user behaviour has been changing offline because of online trends,” says Rajan Anandan, VP and Managing Director, Sales and Operations of Google India.Of the 3,677 respondents interviewed across 12 (4 metro, tier 1 and tier 2) cities, 40 per cent said they engaged in online research before buying a product. The most definitive finding is that an impressive 69 per cent of these intending purchasers make up their minds about the exact model (of smartphone, laptop, tablet, camera etc) they want to buy based on the gamut of information available on the internet before visiting a store. “The retailers’ ability to influence a buyer's mind is diminishing and companies need to look at engaging buyers online about their products and offerings”, explains Anandan. The study conducted at 200 multi-brand and single brand retail stores, interviewed respondents as they were coming out of these stores of whom 34 per cent has already made their purchase. Not surprisingly, 86 per cent of the interviewees were male and 92 per cent fell within the demographic of 18-44 years. Most Searched Technology Brands On Google (January to October 2012)Interestingly, the trend highlights that the impact of the internet (in the final decision making process) is greater in smaller cities. The study finds that 83 per cent of consumers from tier 2 cities (Kanpur, Vadodara, Kochi, Bhubaneshwar) know precisely what they wish to purchase (owing to online research) before they enter a store. The number dwindles to 73 per cent when it comes to tier 1 cities (Chandigarh, Pune, Indore, Coimbatore) and decreases to 53 per cent in the metros (Mumbai, NCR, Chennai, Kolkata). Contrarily and more predictably, the percentage of people committing to pre purchase tech research online is highest in metros at 43 per cent and lowest in tier 2 cities at 25 per cent. Anandan attributes this acute reliance on online data to inform consumer choice in tier 2 cities to the relatively low penetration of brick and mortar gadget and consumer goods retail shops in these cities.The monumental reach of the internet in tier 2 cities is concomitant with the sharp rise mobile internet users. The new mobile generation emerges from smaller cities which is evident from the fact that 22 per cent of people from tier 2 cities (in this survey) access the internet exclusively through their mobile phones as opposed to 8 per cent in metros. Despite the growing presence of the online medium across India it still isn’t the most effective medium for generating initial awareness among prospective consumers as it cannot surpass 9 and isn’t likely too very soon) surpass the lure of television. Fifty-three per cent of the respondents revealed that television advertisements caught their attention as opposed to internet ads which intrigued 23 per cent of the population: this is however higher than print and radio ads which only intrigue 14 per cent of the people, the study reveals.Price point is a decisive moderator of research patterns since the amount of time spent in learning about a tech product is directly proportional to its price; research intensity is higher for high value products. In the mobile phones category, the research intensity increased when price exceeded Rs 7000, for laptops when the price exceeded Rs 30,000.Among the products most researched online, laptops (at 54 per cent) top the list, followed by mobile phones (39 per cent), digital cameras (38 per cent) and televisions (33 per cent). The study estimates that an interested consumer devotes an average of two weeks gathering information about a product before purchasing it. Google’s internal data reveals that volume of search queries on technological and consumer electronics goods is growing at a healthy rate of 39 per cent and is second only to travel. With around 137 million internet users in India, that translates into a lot of hits. Search queries on mobile phones are growing three times faster than those from desktops and this trend is more concentrated in tier 2 cities as previous statistics indicate. Tablets are the most searched category, growing at 160 per cent YoY, followed by television (51 per cent), mobile phones (41 per cent) laptops at 39 per cent and refrigerators at 19 per cent.How many of these tech searches convert into real purchases is a larger question, not quite answered by the survey in question which also chooses to exclude purchases made from e-commerce portals. There is however reason to believe that the rate of conversion (from search to purchase) is significantly high since 67 per cent of the interviewees claimed that they have used Google maps, Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) website to locate an electronics store for their convenience. This corroborates with a recent survey by Deloitte which reports that only 15 per cent of India’s population shops online. Read: E-shopping Yet To Take Off Seventy-two per cent feel the need to buy products from such stores to get a complete ‘touch and feel’ of the product they have otherwise finalised. Forty-six per cent believe they can secure a better deal in terms of price from shop owners.The study culminates in emphasising the new age wisdom which calls on brands to develop their digital strategy, better. Despite the proliferation of user review sites, and technology blogs (such as tec2 and techradar) the survey finds that 66 per cent of people rely on OEM websites to gather information about the product they are interested in buying. Blogs and review sites are favoured by only 39 and 38 per cent of the consumers, respectively. “Brands need to focus on building assets for the internet,” quips Anandan while going on to talk about how Google’s advertising platform will thus enhance its forcus on screening relevant ads. Given that the trust factor (at 78 per cent) is very high among brand websites, it is essential that they focus on providing what consumers search online on their website itself,” Neeraj Gupta, Industry Director, Google India, exclaims.What matters most of course is price, followed by photographs, product specifications, videos and product comparison. Most respondents (82 per cent) watched user videos on brand websites whereas many (62 per cent) relied on YouTube videos. Given that the internet leads to a multiplicity of choices: 55 per cent of people searching for one particular product found many others within the same league and 57 per cent subsequently changed their original choice after a detailed online research, tech OEMs need to work on creating the complete digital package, to whatever extent possible in the near future.
Read More
Companies in India might be rushing in to tap the e-shopping market, but a lot has to be done to encourage consumer and see more transactions. According to Deloitte’s State of the Media Democracy Survey – India 2012 (the Survey), purchasing products is the least online activity done by those surveyed with only 15 per cent saying they shop online. The survey shows that combining online and offline research before deciding what/ where to purchase is important for the majority of consumers. Interestingly, majority of consumers visited websites after watching ads in televisions, newspapers, magazines, or even billboards. And undoubtedly, television is still the reigning emperor and has the most perceived advertising persuasiveness across all age groups.The Internet boom in India continues its growth run. A large majority of consumers, 72 per cent on an average, use search engines on a daily basis. This has been an amazing change compared with the 2009 Survey where only 17 per cent used search engines. Other top activities include emailing (60 per cent) and instant messaging with friends/family (58 per cent). Email is still the most commonly used format for sharing content with others but is particularly low among Millennials, as sharing via social network is their preferred medium. Consumers are actively using the Internet to learn of new products, decide which to buy, and importantly, which not to buy. Millennials are most actively using the Internet to recommend products to others.The second edition of the Survey, commissioned by Deloitte, employed an online methodology among 2006 consumers across all geographies and age groups.It was focused on four generations and five distinct age groups between the ages of 14 and 75. The survey provides a generational ‘reality check’ and a glimpse on consumer preferences, interaction with technology, purchasing trends, response to advertising and a peek into future preferences.As expected Younger consumers are far more comfortable using advanced technologies. They are also more likely to consume media in new formats. For example, nine-in-ten Millennials are using their smartphone as an entertainment device, and a similar proportion say their laptop/desktop PC is more of an entertainment device than their televisionTelevision remains the most common way to consume video, TV content and film, followed by the Internet. However, the proportion of consumers multitasking while watching television is substantial, with the most common activities being emailing, reading, and talking over phone. Television (along with newspapers) is rated as the strongest medium for advertising, with two-thirds saying it’s among their top influences on their buying decisions. About 60 per cent Millennials and 69 per cent Boomers are influenced by ads on TV. Newspapers are a close second, driven by the older age groups (74 per cent of Boomers). The vast majority of consumers continue to read magazines, However, affinity for magazines is considerably lower than TV or newspapers, and they’re regarded as much less influential with regard to advertising.As for magazines – overall, a similar proportion of consumers have read a magazine in the past six months, and household magazine subscriptions are fairly common. However, affinity for magazines is considerable lower than TV or newspapers, and they’re regarded as much less influential with regard to advertisingTrailing Millennials lead the pack everywhere and are the most engaged in a number of media topics, including music, social networking, television, websites, movies, books, apps, videogames and virtual worlds. Conversations about social networking sites and websites have gained tremendously compared with 2009 Survey where the range was 3-4 per cent compared with 45-47 per cent now. Interestingly, newspapers (53 per cent) are the most talked about media topic among consumers, followed by music (47 per cent) and social networking sites (47 per cent) and television shows (46 per cent).Among devices, cellphones/smartphones (82 per cent), desktop (74 per cent), laptop (68 per cent), and digital cameras (61 per cent) are the most commonly owned, while laptops, desktops, and flat panel TV sets also remain the most-valued products. Tablets join the ranks of most valued products, despite low ownership levels. Overall, consumers show a strong interest in convergence of television, internet, video and several contents. The expectation is for being able to access information according to preference anywhere-anytime on their favorite device.
Read More
Move over the TV, PSP and hanging out with friends. Internet-on-phone is the buzzword for the wired generation, shows a survey.Compiled by Ankita RamgopalClick Here To Download Graphic: Sajeev KumarapuramSource: Ericsson Consumer Insight Report, a survey conducted among 3,421 children and 1,000 parents across 16 cities(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 19-11-2012)
Read More
To date, IT has brought significant productivity benefits to organisations by automating key business processes and driving efficiencies Traditionally, a lot of what IT departments did was focused on managing systems, including PCs, servers, storage, and networks.Today, the role of IT is starting to look very different. Organisations are looking for the next level of productivity and business agility by improving collaboration and knowledge sharing. They are looking to better connect their employees, teams, business partners and customers to each other. This is changing the nature of data into highly distributed, largely unstructured information. The infrastructure is moving virtual within the company or turning into an external cloud. Instead of focusing of physical systems management, the role of IT is transforming into more information-centric tasks with governance, policies, risks, and controls. The question here is how does cloud fit in?There is a lot of hype around cloud computing, and for a good reason. The promise of cloud computing, or the promise of delivering highly agile IT as a service, is astounding. As IT is delivered as a service, organisations can improve their agility and can respond better to market opportunities and threats.While there are many reasons for the emergence of cloud, such as broad network access and an ever-improving network infrastructure, proliferation of new endpoints, changing consumer and business expectations, one of the most important enabling technologies for cloud is virtualisation. The emergence of storage and computing virtualisation has become integral to the promise of cloud. While the latest Symantec 2011 State of Cloud Survey found that in India, interest in cloud exsts, here’s a look at the challenges that customers are facing, which are making them cautious about adoption:Misaligned expectations: Cloud is fuzzy and poorly defined. Cloud projects are even less well defined. Many gaps exist across organisations, within IT teams and in the market, leading to unrealistic expectations and hence the “failure” of cloud projects.Unprepared IT Organisations: For success in building your own cloud, you must, for example, not only be highly virtualized, you also must be highly automated with the ability to do charge backs. Many IT organizations have a siloed approach to cloud, with cloud initiatives being separate from regular IT operations. While cloud is different in many ways, in an ideal world the management of cloud should be included within existing policies, tools.Compliance: For many companies that are publicly traded or regulated, compliance plays a major role in their approach to cloud. The ability to complete prove compliance to regulations with compelling audit and reporting often holds back organisations from moving to the cloud.Data Access Control: Finally, ‘security’ is often the top cloud concern cited by IT. When you dig deeper, it is usually concerns about who will have access to my data, and what assurances can be implemented to make sure my information is kept out of the hands of the wrong people. The reality that we see is that most companies today use many clouds, depending on what is right for them. To gain confidence in your cloud, one must understand the patterns of success for cloud and implement strategies that support the pattern befitting each company and your situation.Organisations can choose from one of three options, depending on their business and requirements: they can consume cloud services, build their own clouds or extend their existing environments into private clouds.When consuming a cloud service, organisations are looking to transform complexity to simplicity. Organisations should look for ease of use and ease of getting started. A typical cloud service will also have a low starting point, and be capable of scaling on-demand as your requirements change. Another important and often overlooked requirement is a company’s Service Level Agreements and the type and quality of customer support. As organisations outsource much of the IT function, they will want both certainty of performance and the ability to quickly get help when they need it. In India, the highest interest for cloud is in the consumption of cloud services, particularly around email continuity, antispam and backup, across organisations of all sizes.When organisations are embarking on a cloud project that ‘extends’ their IT to leverage third-party clouds, they want solutions that work seamlessly with their existing policies and investments. Cloud should not be a silo but rather be treated as a continuum that also includes physical and virtual environments. When organisations build a cloud service, they are looking to transform their existing assets into a highly agile infrastructure. We live in a heterogenous world, and hence organisations will need support for a large swath of applications, hardware and operating systems. The reality of IT today is a variety of platforms and systems such as Windows, Solaris, Linux and your solutions should embrace that reality. Furthermore, solutions should be independent of platform lock-in; don’t paint yourself into a corner by picking a solution that represents itself as a ‘cloud-in-a-box’. With virtualisation being a key enabler of cloud, organisations will want solutions that embrace VMware, Hyper-V, Xen, KVM and the like. In India, we typically find ISPs, telcos and IT/IteS players interested in building their own cloud.Regardless of which of these three approaches an organization chooses for its cloud initiative, one must remember that the potential benefits can only be reaped with security, uptime and scalability. Organisations must evaluate vendors on their ability to provide desired levels of service along with these three attributes, and those who can support them throughout their cloud journey.(Anand Naik is Managing Director, Sales, India and SAARC of Symantec)
Read More
o promote cashless transactions, the finance ministry has asked public sector banks to take steps to reduce the fee to zero for electronic transfer of funds up to Rs one lakh.Currently, most banks charge a maximum fee of Rs 5 per transfer of funds up to Rs 1 lakh from one account to another through National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system.Transfer of funds up to Rs 10,000 through NEFT system attract a maximum charge of Rs 2.50 per transaction.In a recent communication to the state-owned banks, the ministry had asked them to "take action" to reduce the NEFT charges to zero for value up to Rs 1 lakh.However, some banks are yet to intimate the ministry about the action taken by them to reduce the charges, sources said.RBI has, however, retained maximum charges of Rs 15 per transaction for electronic transfer of funds beyond Rs 1 lakh to less than Rs 2 lakh.The government has been asking banks to encourage transactions through e-payment channels so as to reduce the number of transactions through cheques and other expensive modes of transactions.The public sector banks have also been asked to identify top 20 per cent branches in respect of business volumes to bring down the number of cheque based transactions by at least one-fifth in the current financial year.The banks have also been asked to ensure that all payments and disbursements by them, except sundry payments, are made only electronically.The RBI had recently said that it is "desirable" that the benefits accruing on account of increasing volume of transactions are passed on to the customers so as to incentivise greater use of the electronic payment system. (PTI)
Read More
Ramco Systems, an enterprise software company focused on enterprise cloud platform, products and services, and Multipolar Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of PT Multipolar Tbk, on 25 September announced a strategic partnership to deliver Ramco’s ERP on Cloud in Indonesia. The partnership marks the launch of Ramco’s successful public Cloud ERP in Indonesia.Ramco has been growing its presence in the APAC region. Already serving customers like Panasonic, SDV Logistics and others in Indonesia, Ramco’s latest move further cements its position in the APAC region. Addressing the media, Virender Aggarwal, CEO, Ramco Systems, said “Having successfully proved the model in home ground, we are now all set to take our cloud offering to global markets. Indonesia is a mature and high potential market in the APAC region, and Multipolar is a well recognized player. We are confident that this partnership will give us the right impetus for growth in the region.” Ramco ERP on Cloud helps customers automate and integrate all their business functions and processes without investing in new hardware, licenses, training, or additional IT staff. It is simple to use, while being comprehensive, flexible and scalable. Customers can choose to subscribe to the full suite ERP or select modules / processes as per their requirement.
Read More
The e-commerce industry in India is expected to grow a tad over five-fold — from $1.6 billion right now to $8.8 billion by 2016 — says a recent study by Assocham and research firm, Forrester. It further states that e-shopping during the forthcoming season is likely to go up by a whopping 350 per cent for products like mobile phones, e-tablets, home appliances, home décor, jewelry and apparels. According to D S Rawat, Secretary General, Assocham, Diwali would see a spurt in shopping for electronic items, gift articles, idols of Gods and Goddesses, sweets, clothes and jewelry due to the heavy discount range and other offers such as free shipping, gifts and gift vouchers. And e-commerce firms want to have a piece of the action coming up, right away. “The festive season sees a lot of planned buying specially in the category of electronics, jewelry, gold and silver coins and diamonds. We are planning to source special offers from the brands in these categories,” says Sandeep K, Vice President Marketing at Snapdeal.com.The festive offers on Snapdeal.com will start sometime next week and the portal plans to run weekly offers based on specific festivals in different regions and purchase patters. For instance, it will have region specific flavours for Ganesh Chaturthi in the west and southern India, Durga Puja in the east and dhanteras in the north.Most e-tailing portals are trying to cash in on the festive season by offering heavy discounts and easy EMI options. “Zero per cent EMI on all categories across the board with no specific ticket size is the key highlight this festive season,” says Manmohan Agarwal, CEO of Big Shoe Bazaar India, which runs yebhi.com and yebhiwholesale.com. Yebhi.com too will introduce the festive season offers in the next couple of weeks. The portal currently has about 80,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) and has already introduced gold, silver and diamond jewelry online.Assocham expects the onling shopping portals to see a growth of about 35-40 per cent during key festivals like Karva Chauth, Dhanteras and Diwali. India currently has more than 120 million internet users, out of which around half opt for online purchases, the Assocham report states. “With such a large market size, companies, right from retail shops to consumer goods, are entering the web space to attract potential customers,” says Rawat who adds “people from Gujarat are taking lead in ordering their Diwali requirements of consumer durables followed by Maharashtra and Delhi”.According to the report, in 2011 the population of e-shoppers in Mumbai was 72 per cent followed by 60 per cent in Delhi and the figures are expected to touch 85 per cent and more than 70 per cent, respectively. “Products that will gain popularity in e-sale this year could include gems and jewellery, online books, accessories, apparel, music and movies, hotel room besides tickets for transportation,” states the report.The report also spots that 38 per cent of regular shoppers are in 18-25 age group, 58 per cent fall in the 26-35 years age group, 18 per cent in 36-45 year age group and 10 per cent in the 45-60 group. Seventy-six per cent of the online shoppers are male and only 24 per cent female. E-commerce players can ride a spending binge.
Read More
US-based e-commerce firm Amazon on 22 August launched its Kindle store, which offers over one million e-books in India.The company also launched its bestselling e-reader Kindle in the country at an introductory price of Rs 6,999."We are proud to launch this new Kindle store for Indian customers, offering Kindle book purchases in rupees ... In addition, we are excited to work with Croma to make Kindle available at retail outlets across India," Amazon.com Vice President of Kindle Content, Russ Grandinetti, said in a statement.The India Kindle Store features a vast selection of titles, new releases, bestsellers, and works from a range of Indian authors, including Chetan Bhagat, Ashwin Sanghi, Ravinder Singh and Amish Tripathi."We are excited to be the first retailer in India to offer the latest generation Kindle to our customers. This product will launch exclusively in all Croma stores across India," Croma CEO and Managing Director Ajit Joshi said.Amazon also launched Kindle direct publishing (KDP) for independent authors and publishers in India.KDP is a free and easy way for authors and publishers to make their books available to Kindle customers in India and around the world on both Kindle devices and free Kindle reading applications.(PTI)
Read More
