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A decade back, several small and medium businesses in India, mostly operating offline, used to found it difficult to reach millions of customers, build their brands, and grow their business. The intention of simplifying the ease of doing business for SMEs was at the core for many. A lot of corporates were trying to contribute their share towards pushing the Indian SME ecosystem into the right and big direction. However, Indian businesses saw a significant shift with the onset of Amazon in the country.
With their business model, the e-commerce retailer saw 100 sellers registered on its site in the first year, which was dismally low. But over the years, there has been a gigantic rise not in just the numbers ( which is 12 lakh), but in the growth of these businesses too. Further, Amazon is working towards digitising 10 million MSMEs, generate $20 billion, and create 2 billion jobs by 2025.
Here’s a look at 5 ways through which Amazon brought small businesses to the online platform.
1) Amazon Tatkal program: Through this program, Amazon enabled small businesses to get online in less than 60 minutes through a specially designed studio-on-wheels offering a suite of launch services including registration, imaging and cataloguing services, as well as basic seller training mechanisms. It enables thousands of interested sellers to start selling on Amazon in real time and experience the benefits of launching an online business.
2) Introduction of Easy Ship: In order to keep Logistics issues of sellers at bay, the tech giant introduced Easy Ship as an end-to-end delivery service in 2014. Under this initiative, sellers store their own products, pack them when they receive an order and then hand it over to the Easy Ship Pick up executive, who then ships the product and ensures timely delivery. But to avail this facility, the sellers have to shell out Easy Ship fee based on the volumetric or actual weight of the package.
3) Help in listing via third party service providers: Since not all sellers in India have the bandwidth and know-how to list their products on Amazon Seller Central, Amazon has put together a network of vetted third-party service providers that can assist them in this task. These providers helped these businesses from shooting great images to articulating product attributes to imaging the product and creating a listing.
4) Setting up a lending program: Understanding the working capital requirement of small businesses, in 2016, Amazon also tied up with a third-party lender so that they can get loans at competitive rates.
5) A dedicated seller app: For making it easy for sellers, Amazon launched a seller app in India. Today over 60% of the sellers on Amazon.in use this app to manage their business. With the help of this app, the sellers can not only complete typically desktop-based tasks such as registration, creating FBA inbound shipment, and order fulfilment on their mobiles.
India is Amazon’s second-largest market outside the USA, growing at a CAGR of 68 per cent. Recently, Amit Agarwal, Global Senior Vice President and Country Head of Amazon India and Andy Jassy, CEO, Amazon met Indian PM Narendra Modi and announced a USD 15 billion investment in India by 2030.
The initiatives don’t end here. On the 10th successful year of Amazon in India, Amit Agarwal, SVP India & Emerging Markets, announced four more new initiatives or innovations from the e-commerce giant. These includes signing of an MoU with the Indian Postal Service for creating a first-of-its-kind cross-border logistics solution that will expand the opportunity for small businesses and entrepreneurs to sell from India’s corner to New York; Partnership with Indian Railways where they will use the freight corridor to enable sellers to ship products faster; Multi Channel fulfillment offering, a supply chain infrastructure which will let sellers sell with ease and not have the worry about logistics and warehousing; and not worry about inventory, and Generative AI solution for small businesses “सह-AI”; an virtual AI assistant to simplify the seller on boarding and expanding process. “We are excited about the growth and the long-term potential in the Indian market and the opportunity to serve millions of consumers and sellers in India”, said Agrawal.
Expressing his excitement, Russell Grandinetti, SVP, International Consumer, Amazon said, “I am very enthusiastic about the next 10 (years in India). Frankly, we are just getting started. The size of this country, the opportunity it has for economic growth generally, it won’t be long before it is the third largest economy in the world. And we feel fortunate to be one player that will be a part of this transformation,” said
The comments were made at the sidelines of Amazon India’s event Amazon Smbhav summit celebrating the 10th anniversary of Amazon operations in India.