Amazon launches as Junglee in India

"Customers can discover over 1.2 crore products and 14,000 brands..."<p>I'm honestly curious: Is it prevalent to use units like <i>lakh</i> and <i>crore</i>[1] on Indian English language websites? I would have guessed that Western units like million or hundred thousand would be more common online.<p>1. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Asian_numbering_system" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Asian_numbering_system</a> comes in handy.

Interesting.<p>1998: Amazon acquires price comparison site junglee.com from Indian cofounders (later of kosmix/walmart labs fame).<p>2012: Amazon launches price comparison site for India called junglee.com

This is hardly amazon. It's merely a product search engine that takes you directly to the product site and shop there. Yikes.

Basic kindle is $113 USD in India and $79 in USA ?<p><a href="http://www.junglee.com/Kindle-Wi-Fi-6-Ink-Display/dp/B0051QVF7A" rel="nofollow">http://www.junglee.com/Kindle-Wi-Fi-6-Ink-Display/dp/B0051QV...</a><p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wi-Fi-Ink-Display-Screensavers/dp/B0051QVESA" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wi-Fi-Ink-Display-Screensavers/...</a>

Co-founder and CEO of flipkart on amazon's junglee.com:<p>"Finally, Amazon has found use for the $250m domain name that they bought 14 years ago"

I presume this is driven by the runaway growth of Flipkart in India right now. Surely Amazon wants to build a footprint so when they have products stocked locally, then can move to a full Amazon.com model with additional sellers also available.

In some North Indian dialects, the word Junglee literally means "Crazy Person". Seriously.<p>When we went with JadoPado (jadopado.com) (which equates to "fatty"), I thought I was going with something funny, but this is on a whole new level :)

In case anyone is windering about the name, junglee means "wild" in Hindi.

"Customers can discover over 1.2 crore products and 14,000 brands, and purchase items directly from hundreds of retailers including Homeshop18, UniverCell, Hidesign, Gitanjali, The Bombay Store, Fabindia, Bata India Limited, Dabur Uveda, Microsoft India Store, Reebok, and Amazon.com."<p>Flipkart is a notable exception. Also a simple Steve Jobs biography search did not list Flipkart as a seller. Great for other companies in the space, at least until amazon.in makes an appearance.

Why did they not launch as Amazon ?

Disappointed that they won't be selling things themselves. They are probably waiting for Government of India to approve 100% FDI in multibrand retail.

I'm not sure about India but here in Pakistan, the word "Junglee" has quite negative connotation attached with it. Unless used for an animal, "junglee" usually refers to an illiterate person with no manners.

Its still in beta. and more like a Product Search Engine as of now.<p>You can see none of Flipkart.com / Letsbuy.com / Infibeam.com (major e-commerce players in India) products/prices being listed there.

Very disappointed that they launched as price comparison website! But probably this is just a beta-test they are doing. I know they are huge practitioners of testing and experiments.

Note the use of the word "crore" as in "We help you discover over 1.2 crore products."<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore</a>

Wow, what a great name.<p>I am so jealous that I didn't register it.

RIP flipkart

i wish the amazon i used had such a clean interface.

I'm jealous of their clean interface. Amazon is honestly a bit annoying to use due to the density of stuff that feels jumbled. That and their over use of really-super (sorry typograph enthusiasts, I don't know better) over-hinted font text images.