Over 1 lakh shops, kiranas gear up to sell on Amazon as MSMEs take center stage this festive season

Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: As India gears up for the festive season ahead, Jeff Bezos Amazon’s India business on Sunday said that more than 1 lakh “Amazon-enabled” local shops, kiranas and neighbourhood stores will be serving customers this year. Over 20,000 offline retailers, kiranas and local shops from Local Shops on Amazon programme will be participating for the first time in the company’s biggest annual sale Great Indian Festival. Local Shops on Amazon, which allows sellers to cater to customers in their local area and deliver products in up to two days, “has scaled rapidly in just 5 months; with more than 40 per cent of the sellers coming from outside the top 10 cities,” Amazon said in a statement. The programme is among a string of initiatives by Amazon such as Amazon Easy (to help local entrepreneurs set up stores), I Have Space (for kirana stores with additional storage space for Amazon packages and sufficient manpower to deliver them in two-three km radius of their stores), Amazon Pay Smart Stores (to enable digital storefront, contactless payments, and reward coupons to customers) etc., catering to micro and small business sellers.

“This festive season we are focused on helping our sellers and other MSME partners grow their business and bounce back from the recent challenges…The integration of Amazon’s programs with 100,000+ ubiquitous neighbourhood stores – for selling online, to help customers buy online, to make deliveries and enable contactless payments – is a testament of the adaptability and inventiveness of Indian entrepreneurs,” said Manish Tiwary, VP – Amazon India.