Amazon Takes On Paytm, Let’s You Book Movie Tickets Online

Amazon is partnering exclusively with Bookmyshow for the movie ticket booking service in India.

Now you have more places to book movie tickets online in India.

(Photo: iStock altered by The Quint)

It does shopping, lets you watch web shows and streams music too, but Amazon in India is not even close to stopping its business expansion.

The online retailer, in partnership with Bookmyshow, now lets users book movie tickets across the country. Doing this puts Amazon up against Paytm, which is the second biggest movie booking platform, after Bookmyshow (BMS) in India.

The exclusive partnership between Amazon and BMS is likely to thwart Paytm’s efforts. Amazon is also offering cashbacks to lure consumers. The feature is available within the main Amazon app. Here’s how the process works on the platform.

How to Book Movie Tickets on Amazon

• Go to Amazon app and click on ‘shop by category’
• Select ‘Movie Ticket’ and choose your city
• Select the movie, pick your seats and pay for the ticket
• You’ll get a mail with the tickets
• The service works on mobile and PC

The Amazon payment interface looks a lot like Paytm’s interface.(Photo: Amazon app screen grab)

Amazon says users will get a 20 percent cashback up to Rs 100, available from 1 November to 14 November, but applicable on a single purchase only. 

It’s interesting that Amazon has added a "movie tickets" section in the "Shop by Category" area, but there is no special space for it on the main page of the app. Just like how it works on BMS, one has to pick a city, select the movie you want to watch, grab the best seats and pay for them.

(Photo: Amazon app screen grab)

The section even says the feature is powered by BookMyShow, giving them access to Amazon’s user base in India, and also manages to offer cash backs, which wasn’t possible till now.

In addition to this, BMS and Amazon are hopeful of penetrating tier 2 and 3 cities in the out-of-home entertainment sector and enhance their experience of booking tickets for movies.

The online-shopping market is expected to grow at a significant pace in India over the next few years. According to a joint report from EY-FICC on the media and entertainment industry earlier this year, the sector in India is pegged to reach 33.6 billion by the end of 2021, with a heavy percentage of movie bookings now done via online platforms.

The same report highlights that in recent years, over 50 percent of ticket sales for the top four multiplex chains were conducted online. The increasing penetration of online transactions is also driven by offers and discounts being offered by online ticketing aggregators.

So it’s easy to see why Amazon is making this move, that too with a brand like BookMyShow.

But this isn’t the only major decision made by the company in the past few months.

Amazon is gradually entering into the highly competitive food delivery market as well. In this arena, it will compete with Swiggy and Zomato among others.

The term "super app" has been used repeatedly throughout this year and Amazon is shaping up to form another of those, rivaling Paytm and Flipkart among others.