Ecommerce

Flipkart Bets on Livestreaming and Video Commerce to Capture India’s Mobile-First Shoppers

• ByStartupStory     |    June 28, 2025

Walmart-backed e-commerce giant Flipkart is doubling down on video commerce and livestreaming to capture the attention of India’s mobile-first, Gen Z shoppers. As competition intensifies with Amazon and Reliance’s JioMart, Flipkart is investing heavily in engaging, influencer-led shopping experiences aimed at converting digital content consumption into real-time purchases.

According to Neha Agrahari, Senior Director at Flipkart, video is becoming central to the company’s customer engagement strategy. “Users prefer to watch a video and make a decision,” Agrahari said in an interview with Bloomberg. This shift in behaviour has led the company to make video and livestream content a cornerstone of its digital storefront.

Flipkart’s internal data reveals that over 200 million users engaged with video content on its app in the first half of 2025, a massive jump from 75 million during the same period last year. The company has seen particularly strong adoption in India’s Tier II and Tier III cities, with 65% of video and livestream engagement originating from these emerging markets.

This aligns with broader consumer trends: two in three Gen Z consumers now prefer video-led formats when shopping online. Flipkart launched its video shopping feature roughly 18 months ago, and today it spans product categories like fashion, skincare, beauty, home décor, and is soon expanding to electronics and fitness.

To scale the video commerce initiative, Flipkart is building physical studios in Gurugram, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, aimed at offering content creators seamless production infrastructure. These studios support activities like product “stress tests”, which are gaining popularity—such as dipping shirts in water to test color durability or dropping smartphones to prove their toughness.

Flipkart is also leveraging livestreams to offer real-time product demonstrations and enable interactions between shoppers and influencers. This mirrors the successful models seen in China, where e-commerce giants have transformed livestreaming into a major sales channel. Platforms like Meesho, backed by SoftBank, have also begun exploring similar features in India.

The results have been encouraging. Flipkart has witnessed a 17x increase in daily livestream user engagement compared to last year. “We don’t mind dropping a mobile phone just to prove that it is strong enough,” Agrahari added, reflecting the interactive and demonstrative nature of their video commerce content.

With over 650 million smartphone users in India and 270 million online shoppers, Flipkart’s strategy taps directly into a mobile-savvy and content-driven audience. As the platform blurs the lines between entertainment and e-commerce, it is positioning itself for deeper consumer engagement—and potentially, a larger slice of India’s booming e-retail market, which is already the second-largest globally, surpassing the United States.

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