Amazon says on track to create 2 million jobs, clock exports of $20 Bn from India by 2025

Seattle-based Amazon

Amazon has digitised over 2 million small businesses in India in just the last year and was on course to meet its target of digitising 10 million of them by 2025, country head Manish Tiwary said at the fourth edition of the Amazon Smbhav summit.

Smbhav, which is a corruption of the word Sambhav in Hindi, is Amazon's event that is focused on enlightening Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) about the opportunities that technology makes possible.

By this time last year, Amazon had digitised 4 million (40 lakh) small businesses and the base has now increased to around 6.2 million (62 lakh), Tiwary said in New Delhi on August 31.

“Today, I am proud to announce that we are on track to meet our 2025 target,” he said. Amazon has said earlier that it plans to digitise 10 million small businesses, enable $20 billion in exports and create 2 million jobs by 2025.

So far, the e-commerce giant has already enabled $8 billion in cumulative exports. “It took us close to five years for the first $5 billion and then the next $3 billion will happen in less than 18 months,” Tiwary said.

When Amazon set up operations in India a decade ago, it had only about 100 sellers who mostly sold books in select cities. Now, Amazon has over 1.2 million (12 lakh) sellers who service each and every pin code in the country, employing millions of people directly and indirectly.

The company cumulatively created over 13 lakh direct and indirect jobs across e-commerce, logistics, manufacturing, content creation, skill development and others.

“Of the 13 lakh jobs, 1.4 lakh jobs were created in just the last one year,” Tiwary said.

Since June 5, 2013, when its India operations first started, Amazon has invested over $6.5 billion to grow categories like e-commerce and video-streaming through Prime. The investment amount was even higher, at around $11 billion, when all of Amazon's businesses in India were considered.

Recently, Amazon launched vernacular languages on its platform, introduced two-hour deliveries, and announced Amazon Smbhav, which has invested in startups like Cashify, FreshToHome and others, through a venture fund.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently said the Seattle-based tech titan would invest  an additional $15 billion in India by 2030, taking its total investment commitments in the country to $26 billion across businesses. It includes $12.7 billion that Amazon Web Services (AWS) said it would invest in India by 2030.