‘iTunes of India’ goes live

Indian ecommerce giant Flipkart recently announced plans to expand its offering to include a retail MP3 download offering. The store, called Flyte, is now officially live.

Flyte has been billed as the “iTunes of India” and allows people to download DRM free MP3s capable of working on any device.

The offering reportedly comes courtesy of Mime 360, a startup bought out by Flipkart, as well as a massive Bollywood back catalogue from Chakpak. According to TheNextWeb, “Mime360 manages content for a number of the country’s biggest publishers and services, and together they give Flipkart links to much of the music industry”.

Commenting on the launch, Flipkart co-founder and CEO Sachin Bansal said: “We had maintained that making digital content available was one of our focus areas and this launch marks our first step in that direction. An online music store made sense, given the wide appeal this category enjoys in the country. Needless to say, all the features that delight Flipkart customers — selection, convenience and customer service will also be intrinsic to Flyte.”

Users will apparently be able to download each song they purchase four times (including the initial purchase) before being cut off.

Although large sections of the store’s catalogue consists of Bollywood soundtracks there are also popular Western English-language offerings and a selection of tracks in Indian languages such as Tamil, Punjabi, and Telugu.

In addition to the usual credit and debit card payments, users can purchase content from the store using Flipkart Wallet, the company’s own payment system.

A music offering only strengthens Flipkart’s position in the expanding Indian ecommerce market. It’s massive local catalogue can only improve this position and should keep it (relatively) safe from opposition such Amazon’s Junglee — an online retail aggregator.