At the inaugural Smbhav Summit in January 2020, Amazon had announced an investment of $1 billion and committed to digitally enable 10 million MSMEs, drive ecommerce exports worth $10 billion, and create 1 million additional jobs in India between 2020 and 2025. Since then, Amazon has added 300,000 direct and indirect jobs in India and added 250,000 new sellers, putting it well on track to fulfill these commitments.
Already, Amazon has enabled cumulative exports worth $3 billion and created nearly 1 million jobs in India till date. Today, more than 2.5 million MSMEs work with Amazon including sellers, artisans & weavers, delivery & logistics services etc.
As the world around us is more digital than ever with the internet and technology becoming an integral part of our lives, we see a massive opportunity to empower millions of SMBs across the country and remain committed for Amazon to be a catalyst for such accelerated progress.”
Amit Agarwal, Global Senior Vice President and Country Head of Amazon India, said, “As we continue to work with small and medium businesses in our ecosystem, we remain committed to bringing new tools, technology and innovation that will unleash the entrepreneurial spirit of Indian businesses, boost exports from the country, help create jobs at scale and contribute to the vision of an Atmanirbhar Bharat. As the world around us is more digital than ever with the internet and technology becoming an integral part of our lives, we see a massive opportunity to empower millions of SMBs across the country and remain committed for Amazon to be a catalyst for such accelerated progress.”
Simplifying online selling
Amazon has introduced seller registration and account management services in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Kannada and more than 75,000 sellers have registered on the Amazon India marketplace in regional Indian languages. Amazon also sharpened its focus on bringing the benefits of eCommerce to neighbourhood stores and had launched a new program called ‘Local Shops on Amazon’ in April 2020. The program has grown 10 times since launch and today over 50,000 offline retailers and neighborhood stores from across the country are selling on Amazon.in.
Driving exports
With Amazon Global Selling, Indian exporters can today list their products on 17 international marketplaces/ websites of Amazon, get access to 150 million paid Prime members and over 300 million customers in 200 countries and territories across the world. With a strong demand from global customers for a range of Made in India products including STEM toys, jewelry, bed linen, healthcare products, tea, leather products and others, 70,000 exporters on the Amazon Global Selling program have cumulatively crossed $3B in exports. It took the program 3 years to clock the first billion in cumulative exports, the second billion came in 18 months and the third one has taken just 12 months.
Job creation
The growth of exports and digital enablement of MSMEs is helping accelerate economic recovery for thousands of businesses which is having a positive impact on job creation as well as the overall economy. In a challenging year where saving livelihoods and creating new jobs was a top priority, Amazon helped create nearly 300,000 direct and indirect jobs across industries including information technology, skill development, content creation, retail, logistics, and manufacturing. This includes job roles in our corporate offices in diverse areas including Machine Learning and Software Development, indirect jobs across our fulfilment centres, logistic centres, sales offices, data centres, and other indirect jobs we create through our ecosystem including sellers’ community. In total, Amazon has helped create over a million direct and indirect jobs in India since 2013.
