E-commerce for MSMEs: With a view to achieving its target of digitising 10 million MSMEs, generating $20 billion in cumulative e-commerce exports and creating 2 million jobs in India by 2025, e-commerce company Amazon India on Thursday made multiple announcements at its Smbhav event, ahead of its annual Great Indian Festival Sale, to boost e-commerce adoption among small businesses and more.
First, it signed a memorandum of understanding with India Post to simplify cross-border logistics for MSME exporters; second, engaged with Indian Railways’ Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFC) for faster delivery. Amazon said it is the first e-commerce company in India to leverage the DFC for shipping customer packages through freight railway routes in India. Third, introduced Amazon सह-AI – a generative AI-powered personal digital assistant, to enhance e-commerce adoption for MSMEs; and fourth, opened its fulfilment capabilities for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands with Multi Channel Fulfilment (MCF).
“We had recently announced an incremental investment of $15 billion in India across all our businesses by 2030 and will continue to be a partner in India’s growth in the 21st century,” said Amit Agarwal, SVP India & Emerging Markets, Amazon.
Under Amazon’s Global Selling programme, Indian exporters will be able to book their shipments, print shipping labels and pay for shipping directly from their seller central account. Moreover, they will be able to drop these shipments to over 100 Dak Niryat Kendras of India Post across India, from where the consignments will be exported to overseas customers.
On the other hand, the digital assistant Amazon सह-AI will help reduce sellers’ workload by simplifying time-consuming and complex steps such as registration, listing, and advertising support amongst others.
With respect to D2C brands, they will be able to leverage Amazon’s logistics and supply chain capabilities to serve customer orders from various sales channels, including their own websites.
“Multi-channel fulfilment democratizes customer order fulfilment and enables sellers to expand their reach by leveraging Amazon delivery network serving 100 per cent of India’s serviceable pin-codes. With MCF, sellers can leverage Amazon’s fulfilment capabilities to pick, pack and ship products to the customer from the sellers’ inventory in Amazon fulfilment centers,” the company said.
Importantly, Amazon completed 10 years in India in June this year. Starting operations with 100 sellers and a selection of mainly books, Amazon India currently has more than 12 lakh sellers and has digitized over 40 lakh small businesses.