Amazon India has announced that over 10 lakh sellers are now selling on Amazon.in from across India. Since January 2020, more than 4.5 lakh new sellers have joined Amazon.in and over one lakh of these new sellers are local offline retailers and neighbourhood stores that have on boarded the Amazon marketplace through the Local Shops on Amazon programme.

Notably more than 90 per cent of the sellers on Amazon.in are small and medium local businesses (SMBs) and over half of these sellers on the marketplace come from tier-2 and tier-3 cities, Amazon said in a press release.

Since inception in India, Amazon has been focused on creating the infrastructure and the ecosystem needed to support SMBs to adopt e-commerce. From taking Chai Cart and Tatkal vans to markets and SMB hubs in cities across India for increasing awareness about e-commerce to launching several India first innovations for Amazon like Seller Flex and Easy Ship, to creating focused programmes to address key seller cohorts like ‘Karigar’ for weavers and artisans, ‘Saheli’ for women entrepreneurs and ‘Launchpad’ for emerging direct-to-consumer brands – teams across Amazon have been focused on enabling these small businesses across India expand their reach to customers across the country and the world through e-commerce.

Amazon India has announced that over 10 lakh sellers are now selling on Amazon.in from across India. Since January 2020, more than 4.5 lakh new sellers have joined Amazon.in and over one lakh of these new sellers are local offline retailers and neighbourhood stores that have on boarded the Amazon marketplace through the Local Shops on Amazon programme.

Amazon has been engaging with the vast network of local neighbourhood stores across India, integrating e-commerce into their operations through focused programmes like Local Shops of Amazon (for online selling), Amazon Easy (for assisted shopping), I Have Space (for last mile deliveries) and more. These focused programs have been witnessing rapid adoption.

“It is heartening to see the role Amazon is playing in enabling small local businesses across the country, including local offline retailers and neighbourhood stores from across India that are adopting e-commerce and placing their trust in Amazon to grow their business by selling online, participating in last mile deliveries, joining assisted shopping and more,” Manish Tiwary, vice president – Amazon India, said.

“The rapid growth of sellers joining Amazon.in reflects the tremendous entrepreneurial spirit of the Indian businesses and the key role e-commerce has played in their business especially during the recent challenges caused by the pandemic. As we look forward, we remain committed to our pledge of digitising 10 million SMBs including the ubiquitous dukaans. We strongly believe that Amazon can play a significant role in fueling India’s digital economy to its $1 trillion ambition,” added Tiwary.

Launched in April 2020, ‘Local Shops on Amazon’ brings the benefits of e-commerce to offline retailers and neighbourhood stores. It helps them supplement existing footfalls at their stores with a digital presence on Amazon.in and expand their reach beyond their normal catchment. For customers, this programme brings together the safety and convenience of online shopping with the familiarity and trust of their favourite local stores. The programme has witnessed accelerated adoption across the country, growing over 20 times since launch with the total number of sellers on the program doubling in just the last eight months. The programme has already been expanded to 450 cities across India including top metros as well as tier 2 and tier 3 cities like Sangli, Osmanabad, Jamnagar, Gorakhpur, Jabalpur, Ratlam, Bikaner, Guwahati, Howrah, Tumkur, Jalpaiguri, Ernakulam, Kanchipuram, Patna, Rajkot, Agra and Dehradun. Amazon has pledged to onboard 10 lakh local stores on Amazon.in by 2025.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RR)