Indian e-commerce sales in 2016 clocked $16 billion mainly due to capital dumped by foreign players and the growing internet access, according to Morgan Stanley. Online sales in India is expected to touch $120 billion by 2020.Gauging the market size, Seattle-based retail giant Amazon after losing its market share in China is now turning every stone in the Indian market. It has been heavily investing on artificial intelligence data analytics , machine language to its increase customer footprint and reduce seller pain points. Notably, all these products and services have been built in India.With a team of data research scientists who have capabilities in machine and deep learning, computer vision and natural language processing, India continues to remain the largest development centre outside of USA. Dale Vaz , CTO, Amazon India cites the growing mobile internet traffic is gradually outweighing desktop traffic but bad internet connectivity across the country led the technology team to develop Micron-light mobile apps to suit low end smartphones.“We introduced near-automated sign-ups for first-time mobile users, revamped our daily deals offering, removed elements which were too heavy for low end users. The app was reduced from 17MB to 2MB.”He says that over 80% of their traffic comes from mobile devices. The app also detects the customer’s location to shows widgets and offers services depending on the network strength and location. “Someone sitting in Delhi may not realize but another person in the interiors of Haryana will face issues due to page load time if too many elements are included. But, we let customers choose which app they prefer.”Also, considering the humungous data that Amazon India churns every second, they also built a Data Mart which holds data sets on customers, their preferences, selling history, seller’s details, and market trends on products.“With this, we help sellers who have lesser experience in advertising online in putting the ads on select items. Our systems analyse customer buying data and pitch items to them which will be relevant. It also provides insights back to sellers and brands based on customer buying patterns.”Amazon India is also relying on artificial intelligence to find out vendors selling overpriced items, incorrect details and even pick out fake reviews on sites.“For instance, a genuine customer who is looking to buy visits Amazon site or app multiple times, views more than 4 products, looks at details of the products and then makes a purchase but certain users just come right in, open one page, book same product multiple times and then choose CoD. In such cases, we block the order to avert faruds.”Leveraging on machine learning, the team is also enhancing its delivery service. “Many a time, end users do not register the exact delivery location which delays the order. Unlike in the US where you have data sources like USPS (United States Postal Service), last mile delivery is difficult in India,” says Vaz.To tackle this pain-point, Amazon India built a model that looks into location data points of all customers and depending on the accuracy of the address, they provide a delivery address ability score between 0 to 100 to indicate a good address. Over time, depending on data collected from delivery agents and users, the score for each address improves leading to faster delivery.Amazon started their India operations four years back in India and has grown 124% yearly and in Q2, 2017, they posted an 88% Year on Year growth.In the coming quarters, Amazon India plans to increase its reach in Tier II & III towns and register more SMEs online. “75% of our traffic comes from lower tier geographies. Last Diwali, 97% of India pin codes placed at least one order. Over 50% of our seller base too comes from Tier II and below geographies,” says Terry Hanold, VP, International Technology, Amazon. He adds that the offline SMEs who have never sold online will be their next target.“Our unique suite of seller services including Selling On Amazon, Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA), Easy Ship, Seller Flex etc. helps SMEs sell more and earn more money. We started with over 100 sellers in 2013 and today this base has grown to more than 2 lakh sellers.”