As many as 70% of the new customers on Amazon Business, the B2B marketplace arm of the company, were from tier-2 and smaller cities in 2024, signalling a rising growth of businesses in these cities, according to a senior executive.
Launched in India in 2017, Amazon Business allows businesses to buy and sell through its platform.
Talking to FE on Friday, Mitranjan Bhaduri, director, Amazon Business, said that they are consistently working on improving the assortment, reducing delivery time and introducing new features like GST-compliant consolidated invoices, to get more businesses to shop from the platform.
The new features seem to be working in larger cities as well.
Currently, Amazon Business offers a catalogue of over 190 million products from more than 1.6 million sellers.
“In the last five years, the sales on Amazon Business have grown at a CAGR of around 50%,” Bhaduri said, adding that in the January-March quarter, it rose more than that.
Moreover, the demand of products offering delivery in one day rose 60%, showing that not only retail customers but businesses also prefer quicker deliveries now.
Bhaduri also said that the main aim of the platform currently is to simplify how MSMEs, as well as large companies, procure their goods in the country.
Amazon Business has also integrated with Amazon Pay Later option to provide businesses with a 30-day interest-free credit option, easing cash flow management.
In India, the company sees the highest number of orders coming from service firms like banks and IT. These include products like printers, laptops, desk organisers, etc.
This is followed by the manufacturing firms. Bhaduri said that education and healthcare companies have also considerably increased the number of orders in the last few quarters.
According to a report by India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), the B2B e-commerce industry is likely to be a $200 billion opportunity by 2030 in the country.
Bhaduri said that their customer-centric features, like spend analytics, which allow firms to track spending and optimise procurement, and custom delivery options, would differentiate them from the competitors.
“If Amazon can faithfully keep solving for customer needs the way it has been, I am very optimistic that they will continue to reward us with their trust,” he said.