Amazon onboards 50,000 small sellers under ‘Local Shops’ programme for shopkeepers in less than a year

Technology for MSMEs: Amazon India’s hyperlocal programme for offline retailers and neighbourhood stores to cater to nearby customers has scaled to over 50,000 sellers from 450 cities in less than one year of launch, according to a company statement on Sunday. Launched in April 2020, Local Shops on Amazon had more than 20,000 sellers participating in Amazon.in’s Great Indian Festival hosted in October 2020. Amazon said that the programme supplements the existing footfalls at sellers’ offline stores with a digital presence. The programme enables online product discovery for customers from shops in their vicinity.

“It underlines how digital enablement and digital inclusion can help them scale and contribute to a digital economy. We remain committed to work closely with the millions of MSMEs including the vast network of neighbourhood stores across the country as part of our focus on transforming the way India buys and sells,” said Manish Tiwary, VP, Amazon India. The micro sellers selling under the Local Shops on Amazon belonged to metros apart from Tier-II and III cities such as Sangli, Osmanabad, Jamnagar, Gorakhpur, Jabalpur, Ratlam, Bikaner, Tumkur, Jalpaiguri etc. The sellers offered products including flowers, home and kitchen products, furniture, electronics, books, toys etc.

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Amazon had also announced earlier this week a collaboration with UN Women to launch a special storefront on its marketplace ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2021, for products made available by women-owned businesses. The company said that over 450 women-led businesses and over 280,000 women entrepreneurs and artisans from Amazon Saheli are likely to be benefited from the launch of the storefront.

Amazon had reported a 42 per cent jump in revenue and a 3 per cent increase in losses for the financial year 2019-20 from the preceding FY2018-19 for its marketplace arm Amazon Seller Services in India. The revenue for Amazon, which primarily competes with Walmart-owned Flipkart apart from Alibaba and SoftBank backed Paytm Mall, Snapdeal, and vertical marketplaces such as BigBasket, Grofers, and JioMart in grocery and Myntra in the fashion segment, stood at Rs 11,028 crore, up from Rs 7,777 crore in FY19. The net loss increased from Rs 5,685 crore in FY19 to Rs 5,849 crore in FY20.