Amazon India announced the launch of Smart Commerce, a new initiative to transform local stores into digital dukaans, during its annual summit Amazon Smbhav, and to accelerate its goal to digitize one crore small enterprises by 2025. Amazon.in is already used by over 1.5 lakh local retailers to sell online.
Stores may now use Smart Commerce to digitize their offline operations, improve in-store shopping experiences for walk-in customers, and develop their online storefronts to service customers directly.
Stores of any size can now take advantage of Amazon’s best shopping innovations, logistics, digital payments, and more to provide a reliable and trustworthy experience to their customers regardless of where they are: in their physical store, directly through their online storefront, or on Amazon.in.
Smart Commerce will also introduce its first set of solutions to assist local businesses in digitizing billing and inventory management and providing customers with a better in-store experience. Following that, capabilities will be released to allow them to construct their online storefront in minutes and service their consumers using a simple voice and chat-based shopping experience.
In a statement, Amit Agarwal, SVP, India and Emerging Markets, Amazon, said, “We are humbled by how neighborhood stores from across India are taking advantage of our Local Shops on Amazon program to go online and grow their business, with over 1.5 lakh stores already selling on Amazon India within two years of launch. Today, we are excited to launch Smart Commerce that will enable any store to truly become a digital dukaan, and serve customers with the best of Amazon no matter where they are – in their physical store, directly through their own online storefront, or on Amazon.in. We are just getting started and remain committed to our pledge to digitize one crore small businesses by 2025.”
Amazon pledged to digitize 10 million MSMEs, generate $10 billion in cumulative exports from India, and create 2 million jobs in India by 2025 at the inaugural Smbhav Summit in January 2020. The Company is on track to meet these commitments and, in certain cases, exceed them. Amazon increased their export goal from $10 billion to $20 billion in the same time frame.
“Over the last two years, we have invested significantly towards the pledges we announced at the inaugural Smbhav Summit in 2020. We are humbled to share that we have already digitized over 4 million small businesses and local stores, are on track to enable $5 billion in cumulative exports and have created over 1.16 million direct and indirect jobs in India including 135K new jobs added in the last one year,” said Manish Tiwary, Country Manager, India Consumer Business, Amazon India, in a statement.
