Amazon.com launches in India as Junglee.com

The US e-commerce biggie uses a domain name it had acquired in 1998 for its foray into Indian online retail space.

Ending months of speculation, the US-based e-commerce portal Amazon.com, has made its foray into India with the launch of Junglee.com, a new online shopping portal.

Junglee organises product selection from Indian and global brands, and features buying options from online and offline retailers including Amazon.com, on one platform. Amazon acquired Junglee, a company that provided advanced web-based virtual database technology that helped shoppers find millions of products on the internet, in 1998.

Customers can shop for more than 1.2 crore products and view buying options from online and offline retailers, including Homeshop18, UniverCell, Hidesign, Fabindia, Bata India, Dabur Uveda, Microsoft India Store, Reebok, and Amazon.com. It features more than 25 product categories including mobile phones, cameras, toys and games, baby products, books, music, movies and TV, clothing, and jewellery.

Commenting on the launch, Amit Agarwal, vice-president, Amazon.com, says, "With Junglee.com, we have come up with a single online platform for customers where they can shop from a wide selection of products sold by local and global retailers. We're focussed on improving the customer experience and growing selection, making it convenient for customers to find anything online."

Junglee directly integrates with online and offline retailers to list their entire selection of products available in India and leverages Amazon's search technology to make it convenient for customers to navigate the selection and quickly find what they are looking for.

The newly-launched portal uses the same recommendation engine technology as Amazon.com, to provide customers with unique ways to discover products, such as displaying the 'Most frequently viewed products', or 'Customers who viewed this product also viewed'.

Junglee aggregates detailed product information, including customer reviews, price, and shipping speed across multiple sources, including Amazon.com, and enables customers to research products and evaluate buying options. Customers can also write their own reviews, read millions of real-time customer reviews from Amazon.com, "Like" products or sellers, and share products through Facebook, Twitter, and email.