Amazon launches Smart Commerce, aims to to transform local stores into digital dukaans

(Representative image)

E-commerce giant Amazon on May 18 announced the launch of its 'Smart Commerce' initiative that aims to digitize 10 million small businesses in India and enable exports worth $10 billion, creating 2 million jobs by 2025.

Launching this initiative during the Amazon Smbhav Summit 2022, Amit Agarwal, Senior Vice President, India and Emerging markets at Amazon, said that this initiative aims to transform local stores into digital dukaans.

“With Smart commerce stores, we will be able to digitize their offline operations, provide enhanced in-store shopping experiences to their walk-in customers and create their own online store from within minutes to serve customers directly,” Agarwal added.

“Stores of any size can now take advantage of the best of Amazon to provide a trustworthy experience to their customers no matter where they are in their physical store directly through their own online storefront on Amazon.”

Agarwal also said that the company plans to digitise one crore small businesses across the country by 2025.

“More than 8 million local stores and small businesses are today using Amazon pay with more than 80 percent of them in tier 2 and smaller geographies. Over 75 percent of customers that use Amazon pay UPI are from these smaller cities,” said Manish Tiwary, vice president and country manager of Amazon.

“We are taking a pledge to digitize 10 million small businesses and enable exports worth $10 billion and create 2 million jobs by 2025. And I'm happy to share that we made significant progress on these commitments.”

Tiwary also said that Amazon has so far created more than 11,60,000 direct and indirect jobs in India with more than 1,35,000  jobs added in the last one year which includes across industries like it e-commerce logistics, manufacturing, content creation, skill development.

“We've already digitized over 40 lakh or 4 million local stores and small businesses across the country, up from 25 lakh that we had announced at Amazon Smbhav last year. In 2021, we crossed a significant milestone of 10 lakh sellers on Amazon.in and more than 2, 70,000 local neighborhood stores are now partnering with Amazon.

“We continue to see a remarkable momentum in the export of made in India products through a global selling program. Today, we have over 1 lakh Indian exporters on the program, who are showcasing millions of made in India products to customers across the world. And together, they are on track to surpass $5 billion in e-commerce exports,” said Tiwary.

Last year during the same event, Amazon launched a $250 million venture fund for India which was aimed to invest in startups working on digitising small and medium business (SMBs), and those innovating in agriculture and healthcare technology.