Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) officially launched its India Kindle Store on Wednesday. The store includes more than one million books, priced in rupees, and available for purchase by Indian customers on Amazon.com.
The U.S. e-commerce giant has signed an exclusive deal with Croma for the sale of the basic Kindle e-reader across India. Croma, a Tata enterprise, has its retail stores spread across the whole country. The pricing of this Kindle model will be priced at around Rs. 6999 ($127). The Kindle being sold is the entry level model and not the touch-screen version.
“We are proud to launch this new Kindle store for Indian customers – offering Kindle book purchases in rupees and the ability to buy and read the work of many great Indian authors,” said Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle Content, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). “In addition, we are excited to work with Croma to make Kindle available at retail outlets across India.”
This e-book reader comes with Wi-Fi and has a total storage capacity of 2 GB, which can store up to 1400 e-books.
The books offered are not only in English, but also include Hindi and Telegu titles.
The Kindle Store allows users to buy books once and read them everywhere—on Kindle, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, and Android-based devices. The good thing is that Indian customers can now shop for Kindle books in rupees, and they can enjoy titles from many popular Indian authors like Chetan Bhagat, Ashwin Sanghi, Ravinder Singh, and Amish Tripathi. The new India Kindle Store can now be accessed from www.amazon.com/kindlestoreindia.
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) also launched Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), a self-publishing tool for independent authors and publishers in India, which enables them to publish their ebooks for Kindle customers in India and around the world. New features for authors and publishers in India include the ability to set prices specific for India, as well as receive royalty payments in rupees.
Earlier this year, Amazon entered India’s online retail market with Junglee.com, which is a price comparison portal. It seems Amazon has their own strategic plans to expand their presence in India with this new venture.
