Prime Day: How Amazon Business is Supporting MSMEs?

The pandemic in the last 18 months has led to accelerated digital adoption around us. Amazon.in the marketplace is no different and it has grown to over 8.5 lakh thriving sellers from across the country. Just in the last 18 months, over 3 lakh businesses went online with Amazon, over 50K offline local stores joined the Amazon marketplace in the last few months, over 75K new SMBs joined using local languages, and it created more than 300K jobs during this challenging time. 

“Amazon Business has significantly grown its customer base, seeing an increase of over 90 percent y-o-y in India and has been especially helping MSMEs rebound from operational challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. During these challenging times, customers have turned to Amazon Business, leading to a 70 percent increase in buying customers and a 35 percent increase in monthly active users. For our MSME selling partners, Amazon Business provides an additional opportunity on Amazon.in to cater to requirements from lakhs of business customers and grow their revenues. This Prime Day, Amazon Business aims to empower MSMEs by offering over 15 crore GST enabled products across top categories to cater to their distinct business needs,” states Peter George, Director, Amazon Business

Innovations Introduced

This year Amazon has launched Business PAN-India as an additional license type through which MSMEs with an annual turnover of less than Rs 20 lakh, education institutes, and NGOs can register and avail Amazon Business benefits. 

“We also launched the ‘Bill to Ship to’ feature as we have taken a lead in solving this unique customer problem and offered a solution which allows them to claim GST credit on their billing address for their PAN-India shipments. This convenient feature allows customers to consolidate the tax credit to one state and make use of GST credit more effectively. We constantly work with our sellers to give business exclusive deals to our customers. During Prime Day, Amazon Business customers can access a wide range of exciting new launches from categories like smartphones, laptops, printers, electronics, appliances, home, and kitchen products from top brands and also get a 10 percent instant discount with HDFC Bank debit/ credit cards and EMI transactions,” he asserts.

Digitally Educating MSMEs

As we strive through challenging and unprecedented times, it’s humbling to see how Amazon Business has played a crucial role in enabling and supporting small businesses in India to get back on their feet.

“It has been our continued effort to empower businesses to navigate through such challenging times by helping them become more efficient and reduce their cost of procurement. This is enabled through a host of features we have added such as multi-users account features to enhance account security and compliance and shared payment methods and business analytics tools. Businesses have access to analytics which help them get a detailed understanding of their spending and where they can save further,” George shares.

“Amazon Business has also launched stores relevant to the different needs of businesses such as WFH store, distance learning store, virtual classroom store, Covid supply store, and MSME accelerate amongst others. This has helped MSMEs leverage a single consolidated destination to access a wide range of products to cater to their various needs of creating a safe work environment and ramping up operations,” he further adds.

Support MSMEs

Amazon Business continues to remain customer-obsessed and is very focused on building the right customer experience right from day 1. 

“We believe, our customers, no matter which segment they are from, will only choose us as long as they find a better experience elsewhere. One of our endeavors is to help businesses increase transparency in their procurement spends. To help them do that, we have launched a host of features like multi-users accounts, order approval, and shared payment methods. Business also has access to analytics which help them get a detailed understanding of their spends and where they save further,” he says.

“During Prime Day on July 26 -27, Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) and start-ups are launching 2,400+ unique and differentiated new products across categories like electronics, grocery, beauty and grooming, apparel and home and kitchen; over 75,000+ local shops on Amazon sellers from 450+ cities to make their Prime Day debut in India; customers can shop from millions of unique products offered by SMBs and avail offers such as 10 percent cashback up to Rs 150 on their Prime Day purchases,” he adds.

Prime Day: What’s New?

During Prime Day on July 26-27, Amazon Business customers can access a wide range of exciting new launches from categories like smartphones, laptops, printers, electronics, appliances, home, and kitchen products from top brands like OnePlus, Apple, Intel, AMD, Bajaj, Anchor, bOAt, Kimberly Clark, Zebronics and more. 

“Amazon Business customers can use Prime Day to plan for all kinds of long and short term business purchases with greater savings on account of bulk discounts, exclusive deals, lower price offers, GST invoice for input tax credit and more,” he concludes.