Ecommerce app being expanded to offer a host of services under one roof? That appears to be the case with Amazon reportedly planning to add ticket booking, food ordering and hailing a cab on its mobile app. There are basically two triggering factors here: One is the large user base the company has acquired in India over the years (around 150 million). The other could be Tapzo, a startup that Amazon India had acquired last year.
Market observers see this trend among many players in the market. The most difficult job is to build a captive customer base. Once in, it pays to expand the services that the customers look for. And helping in the process is the application programming interface or API. This technology allows seamless integration of services across apps.
The typical example cited is that of WeChat owned by Tencent, China. That is an all-in-one app with over a billion daily active users, humongous by any yardstick.
As far as Amazon is concerned, though it has a huge base, the active number of people who do transactions on a monthly basis don’t exceed 25 million. Now if these additional services are offered on the same platform, this number could post an increase.
Amazon has a number of associations already through its digital payments channel, Amazon Pay. Yatra, RedBus and Abhibus for ticketing/ travel and in the food and beverages segment, Faasos, Box8, FreshMenu and Cafe Coffee Day are all in partnership with Amazon Pay. Onboarding them with some offers etc. on the main Amazon app should pose no issues. For travel, it appears Cleratrip is said to be preferred partner.
Tapzo, meanwhile, hosts a number of service providers like Uber, Ola, Swiggy, Zomato, BookMyShow and BillDesk and so on.