Flipkart’s ‘House of Flagships’ is its latest bid to get the ‘edge’ over Amazon in India

• After losing its crown to Amazon last year, Walmart-owned Flipkart’s latest bid to win over the market share is a new project called ‘Flipkart Edge’.
  
• Spotted on the Flipkart App, the ‘House of Flagships’ is an exclusive portal for flagship smartphones.
  
• There also seem to plans to roll out membership for the House of Flagships, which will give members exclusive privileges — the details of which are still unknown.
  

The e-commerce place in India is currently a battle zone between Walmart-owned Flipkart and Amazon. And, it looks like it’s going to stay that way at least until Mukesh Ambani officially launches the online version of his store, Reliance Retail.

After losing its throne in the Indian market to Amazon in 2018, Flipkart is looking to get its ‘edge’ back with the ‘House of Flagships’. The Oppo Reno and Pixel 3a are already listed with the promise of more flagship phones in the near future.

Spotted on the Flipkart App, under the mobile category, the portal describes itself as the ‘Home of the most innovative and cutting-edge flagship phones on Flipkart’.

More than just portal, Flipkart Edge seems to be a sort of club that requires users to sign up. Upon attaining membership they will be privy to ‘Art of Photography’, ‘Game Mode On’ and ‘Tech Gyaan’ — the details of which are still unknown.

But even without membership it seems that Flipkart is promising the usual complete mobile protection at ₹99, multiple payments option and express delivery of phones within 12 hours.

What’s new is the ‘Love it or Return it Challenge’ that gives users the option to return their phones within 90 days — that’s 3 months — of purchase with a 90% buyback value.


Flipkart’s plan

Flipkart had so far led the Indian market but Amazon took its crown away recording $7.5 billion in gross merchandise value (GVM) in 2018. One of the categories where Amazon zipped ahead of the competition was electronics — smartphones, specifically.

Aside from the ‘exclusivity’ angle, the fact that there is a membership plan involved will help the brand retain its customers. The effect also trickles down to Flipkart’s partner smartphone brands

In addition to the listed flagship phones by Oppo and Google, the Asus Zenfone 6Z is also scheduled to launch exclusively on Flipkart once it makes it way to India.

Samsung, Lenovo, Meuizu, Nubia, Poco, and Honor are already listed on the banner head indicating that their flagship devices will probably also be launched on Flipkart.

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