Taking on Amazon’s Prime subscription service, Flipkart has announced that it will launch its customer-benefits program ‘Flipkart Plus’ on August 15.
Flipkart Plus is a benefits program for its customers from all over the country offering features such as a wide range of choices on rewards. The program promises a superior experience for customers across all touch points, with key highlights being free and fast delivery, early access to major sale events such as big festive season sales, and an enhanced customer support experience.
While Prime subscription currently costs Rs 999 a year in India, Flipkart’s membership program is free.
In addition, post launch, all Flipkart customers will begin to earn ‘Plus Coins’ with each order, which will give them benefits across shopping, travel and content.
Flipkart said in a statement that all major internet companies will participate in this initiative.
“At Flipkart, we deeply understand the Indian customer and solve for them meaningfully. This means that everything we do is not just limited to a particular section of the society but appeals to a wider audience. With that in mind, we have crafted Flipkart Plus as India’s most inclusive customer benefits program and we’re extremely thrilled to launch it this Independence Day,” said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart.
While the prevalent norm for customer rewards programs is to provide benefits in the core business of a company, Flipkart Plus strives to extend benefits to an ecosystem of partners from which customers can choose from, it said in its statement.
This is Flipkart’s second effort at a loyalty service after Flipkart First programme failed to take off.
Flipkart Plus will directly compete with Amazon’s Prime subscription, which also offers exclusive and early access to sales, free and faster delivery, along with the benefit of access to Prime video. Prime saw immense success in India and reports suggest that currently 30% of all orders on Amazon India comes from Prime.