Amazon launched its B2B online marketplace in September 2017 and will be completing three years this month. In just three years, it has become the one-stop-shop for businesses across the country, with the largest offering of GST-enabled selection for a wide variety of products for MSMEs. Amazon Business serves customers across focus verticals like IT, Telecom, Services, Education, Hospitality and Healthcare, offering products such as IT peripherals, home, kitchen and office supplies, large appliances, cleaning essentials and others.
Since its launch in 2017, Amazon Business has grown its customer base by 103% year on year, and has been helping small and mid-sized businesses(SMBs) in India to be more efficient by assisting them to tackle their indirect spends and bring down the overall cost of procurement.
To celebrate its 3rd Anniversary Amazon Business has rolled out a special offer for its customers. Amazon Business will be running a seven-day special Anniversary Bonanza offer for its customers on 25th - 30th September with upto 10% Cashback on orders above 1000 and upto 10%+10% cashback orders above INR 5000 or above.
Click here to access the offer
On the 3rd anniversary of Amazon Business, we connected with the first set of businesses customers who had created an account with Amazon Business way back in 2017. Here is what they had to say about their experience so far:
'GST invoicing feature has helped a lot'
◆ Rajshree Vijayvargiya, COO, Zendoodles:
Zendoodles is a family-owned business passionate about arts. Being managed by a husband-wife duo, their venture aspires to capture the richness of modern, hand-made Indian creatives. They maintain a diversified portfolio of products and services that mainly includes hand-made entangled doodles. Their target customers are patrons who insist on authentic, hand-made creatives in the current era of digitally rendered graphics.
Zendoodles regularly procures colour pen sets, graphite pencils, geometry kits and stencils for making high-quality entangled doodle arts. Since the time Amazon Business helped them locate a seller with all the right products at a competitive price, it has been the one-stop destination for all of Zendoodles' operational and logistics requirements.
According to Rajshree Vijayvargiya, the variety of business products, the ability to support bulk purchase items, door-step delivery, and return policy have been central to many of Zendoodles' essential purchases. She stressed that the GST invoicing feature has helped them to claim GST input tax credit and has allowed them to save over 28% on specific business purchases. Rajshree is highly impressed by the deep sense of purpose that Amazon Business brings to accentuate values for the end-user. She claims that features like spending limits, centralised procurement monitoring, and access to substantial price discounts have been vital in optimising her business's operational overheads.
'Analytics feature provides good data points'
◆ Mustafa Maimoon, Founder & CEO, New Tech Dies, Nagpur:
New Tech Dies, based at Nagpur specialises in manufacturing and supplying metal press dies for the aluminium industry. Their products and services are applicable across electronics hardware, electrical appliances, architectural fittings and oil and gas sectors. This family-owned enterprise makes high quality and affordable operational feeds for a wide variety of stakeholders. Started as a small venture, today, they have a customer base distributed all over the country.
When the Government of India had rolled out the GST regime, Mr. Mustafa was highly impressed by Amazon Business's automated GST invoicing feature that made it hassle-free for his business to claim input tax credits on select procurement. Since then, Mr. Mustafa has been consistently using Amazon Business to optimise the explicit and implicit costs associated with their procurement operations and streamline their procurement executives' workflow.
Amazon Business has helped him research and review the features of the latest industrial safety gears available in the market and set up requisitions based on market requirements. Amazon's one-click return policy has addressed his concerns about procuring quality items and providing only the best to their clients. The business analytics feature available with Amazon Business has allowed him to generate comprehensive reports on procurement spending and providing valuable data points for budgeting exercises.
'Single-window listing of all available products impressive'
◆ Vinod, Owner, National Leaping, Udaipur:
National Leaping, Udaipur is a 17-year-old family-owned proprietorship concern managed by a father and son duo. Theirs is a trading venture that deals in laminate and veneer coatings for plywood applications. They cater to the requirements of both retail and wholesaling clients, including renowned real-estate developers. They procure high-quality and durable wood-coating products from all leading brands and source them at an affordable price.
When the Indian Government had launched the GST regime, National Leaping was on the lookout for a platform that could simplify their claim of input tax credit vis-à-vis their business purchases. Amazon Business not only met this criterion, but also delighted them with the quality of the products and the reliable door-step delivery that effectively eliminated time and cost implications.
Reliability, transactional certainty, a single-window listing of all available products, considerable discounts, and fast and dependable shipping are the noteworthy services that have impressed them most about Amazon Business. Mr. Vinod talks highly about the business ethics standards set by Amazon Business as he recounts how Amazon Business promptly replaced a package that was delivered to him with contents damaged in transit. This easy return policy and effective replacement of defective items furthermore strengthened his belief in Amazon Business.
Amazon Business customers avail huge savings on their business purchase with GST invoice for input tax credit, quantity discounts on bulks purchases, business exclusive discounts on business relevant selection on top of any existing deals available in the marketplace and through the exclusive monthly event called BVD where business customers can avail cashbacks linked to their purchase quantum cashbacks.
In the aftermath of the COVID-imposed lockdown, customers have started turning to Amazon Business even more leading to a 46% spike in average monthly order volumes compared to pre-lockdown, not only in major cities but also smaller towns and rural areas. Similarly, Amazon Business has seen a spike of 45% in average monthly customer registrations post COVID-19 that has in turn seen heightened interest from sellers wanting to sell to B2B customers.
