Amazon starts Rs 129 Prime monthly plan

Amazon Prime has launched Rs 129 monthly plan for users in an attempt to shore up membership numbers in India. For the past two years, Amazon Prime membership was only available at a revised price of Rs 999 annually.

According to the company, the option of a monthly plan is likely to bring in new users, who had been reluctant about committing a bigger sum for a yearlong subscription. The e-commerce behemoth also said it was seeing a strong adoption of Prime across tier-2 and tier-3 cities, as it has now reached 400 cities and towns.

Amazon India director and head of Prime Akshay Sahi said the launch of a monthly option and tie-ups with telcos like Vodafone and Airtel to offer their postpaid customers a one-year Amazon Prime membership for free are ways to make the subscription platform more accessible to a wider population.

For the first time this year, Amazon’s founder & CEO Jeff Bezos gave out the total number of Prime members, which he said topped 100 million globally. Amazon doesn’t split these numbers country wise. Bezos also said previously that India clocked the fastest growth in the first year of the launch of Prime membership service worldwide.

Sahi said, Amazon’s partnership with telecom operators was an India-led innovation that is likely to be taken outside of the country. Amazon’s tieups with Vodafone and Airtel will allow customers pay the membership fee as part of their postpaid plan.

Prime members are guaranteed one and two day delivery along with services like Video and Music. Sahi said that customers are buying the membership for faster deliveries and services that come bundled with Prime.