On Monday, Amazon (AMZN 1.30%) revealed that it had achieved an important milestone in India: It has reached more than 1 million Prime subscribers. The announcement came as part of the company's blog post detailing the results of Amazon India's Prime Day 2020, held on Aug. 6-7. The e-commerce titan said that in the 14 days leading up to the two-day event, "[o]ver 1 million Prime members shopped from small businesses."
Twice as many customers signed up for a Prime subscription during the 2020 event compared to last year, and 65% of the new customers were from more rural areas, outside the top 10 cities in India.
Image source: Getty Images.
It was the highest participation ever for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) on the platform in India, with more than "91,000 SMBs, artisans, weavers and women entrepreneurs" participating in the event. Over 62,000 of these merchants were from smaller cities across the country, and 31,000 vendors reported their highest sales ever.
The event also delivered a number of other impressive metrics for the tech giant, with 80% of Prime members engaging with at least one Prime member benefit, including shopping, Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Reading, and gaming activities.
In fact, the two weeks leading up to the event were the best ever for Prime Video, with a record number of viewers streaming content on the platform. This also held true for Prime Music, with the highest number of members streaming in the week leading up to the event, listening to music in more than 50 different languages. It was also the biggest day ever for Amazon devices in the country, with customers stocking up on Echo smart speakers, Fire TV Sticks, and Kindle devices.
This higher engagement makes it more likely that those who subscribed to Amazon simply to participate in Prime Day will stick around once the sale is over.
