In India, businesses are swiftly marking their presence on digital platforms for reaching a large number of customers. The benefit of the online business model is inevitable as it helps in driving sales further irrespective of your physical presence. Also, businesses can diversify their offerings on online marketplace which allows them to grow with more pace. Indian SMBs now aim to accelerate their business growth by leveraging immense opportunities through digital platforms. Amazon Business continues to assist SMBs in scaling their business by reaching wider parts of the country. The platform has been witnessing the registration of businesses from across India. Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal interacted with Suchit Subhas, Director, Amazon Business. Mr. Suchit shared his views on the support that they are providing to Indian businesses, their journey and challenges in the market. Read below the excerpts:
Rajeev: How is Amazon Business helping Indian MSMEs to run their business more efficiently?
Suchit: In the past four years of Amazon Business, we have always focused on helping MSMEs in India run their businesses more efficiently by offering them frequently purchased business supplies and products at wholesale prices, thus reducing the overall cost of procurement and improving profitability. With presence in 99.5% pin codes pan-India, Amazon Business has become a one-stop shop available to MSMEs across the remotest parts of the country for their purchase needs.
Currently, we are India’s largest GST store and have added a host of features through which businesses can avail GST invoice with ease and sophisticated business analytics tools through which they can calculate extra savings with a GST invoice every time they make a business purchase.
Additionally, we have continued to add products to cater to changing needs of businesses. Our Commercial Store offers thousands of products across top categories such as business laptops, networking devices, industrial adhesives, tools and equipment and safety and security across top brands such as Lenovo, Cisco, Pidilite, Kimberly Clark, Stanley Black and Decker, Kirloskar. Similarly, we also have a dedicated COVID Supply Store through which businesses can buy a range of essential products like PPE kits, masks, face shields and sanitizers.
For our seller partners, Amazon Business provides an additional opportunity on Amazon.in to scale their B2B business by catering to requirements from lakhs of business customers and grow their revenues. Through features such as ‘Request for Quantity Discount’, our sellers have catered to lakhs of bulk orders from businesses across the country. We had started our journey with 14K sellers in 2017 and currently have 6.5 lacs sellers catering to requirements from business customers.
Rajeev: Please brief about the journey of Amazon Business in the last four years in India. What key milestones have been achieved by you during this phase?
Suchit: Launched in 2017, Amazon Business is a B2B marketplace offering business supplies and products to small and medium businesses such as small offices, entrepreneurs, department stores, kirana stores, pharmacies, clinics, hospitals, hotels, and restaurants at wholesale prices. Through GST-enabled solutions across 99.5% pin codes across India, paired with competitive pricing, Amazon Business has grown to be a one-stop solution for all business needs with over 30% of customers coming from tier 2 and 3 markets. Currently, Amazon Business offers 15 Cr GST products by 6.5 lac sellers on the platform.
In the past four years, we not only continued to grow in terms of customers but also added a host of features which can further simplify the procurement process for small and medium businesses. Launched in 2021, ‘Business PAN’ is an additional license type through which MSMEs with annual turnover of less than INR 20L, Education Institutes and NGOs can register and avail Amazon Business benefits. We also launched the ‘Bill to Ship to’ feature that allows customers to claim GST credit on their billing address for their pan-India shipments. This convenient feature helps customers to consolidate the tax credit to one state and make use of GST credit more effectively.
In addition to this, we have continuously added a host of features like multi-users account, order approval and shared payment method to help businesses increase transparency while procuring business needs. Businesses also have access to sophisticated analytics tools which help them get a detailed understanding of their spends and where they can save further.
We will continue to cater to the evolving needs of our customer base and contribute to growing MSME space of India.
Rajeev: How did Amazon Business help MSMEs rebound from operational challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic?
Suchit: The last two years of COVID-19 have been extremely difficult for the Indian MSME space. While the government and corporates are working to support the small and medium business in mitigating the impact of the pandemic, they are still in the recovery phase.
We, at Amazon Business, are also working to cater the evolving needs of the MSMEs and help them in recovering from the disruption caused by the pandemic. We recently launched stores relevant to the different needs of businesses such as WFH store, Distance Learning store, Virtual classroom store, Covid Supply store, 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.
Rajeev: What are your plans regarding penetration in tier II & III markets? How do you look at the role of Amazon Business in uplifting small businesses in India?
Suchit: Amazon Business currently houses India’s largest GST enabled selection. We serve 99.5% pincodes across the country and have businesses from some of the remotest parts of the country buying from us. More than 30% of our buying customers come from Tier II and III markets.
90% of sellers on Amazon.in use Amazon’s logistics and warehousing services out of which over 50% of our sellers are from Tier II and below cities.
We are delighted that Amazon Business is able to cover the length and breadth of the country and cater to the MSMEs belonging from the remotest parts of India.
