Once again, Amazon has taken a step towards incorporating small retail stores across the country into the digital retail market with the launch of their new initiative, Smart Commerce.
Smart Commerce works with local stores to help them provide an enhanced in-store experience to their walk-in customers, as well as allowing them to set up independent digital storefronts to tap into the online retail customer pool. As per Amazon’s reportings, 4 million small business across the country already sell their products on Amazon’s own e-commerce website.
Speaking at the annual Amazon Smbhav summit, Amit Agarwal, SVP, India and emerging markets, said “Smart Commerce that will enable any store to truly become a digital dukaan. They will be able to 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, through Smart Commerce, will be providing MSMEs a portal into their own well established and fluid logistics resources, as well as their strong back-end infrastructure to run their digital storefront. Smart Commerce will offer store owners features like digitization of billing, inventory management among others As the retail marketspace continues to be devoured by the bigger players and transitions rapidly to an all-online medium, brick-and-mortar stores could find Smart Commerce to be an essential tool to survive and adapt to modern times.
Amazon has infused around $6.5 Billion cumulatively across multiple initiatives in the Indian market. And boy has the Indian resolve responded to the trust. Amazon’s goals for India have been well on pace for timely completion. India has already accounted for $5 Billion in exports via Amazon, and is on pace to reach $20 billion by the year 2025. Amazon aim to digitise 10 million Indian small businesses across the country by 2025.
The Indian retail market is a bustling environment in today’s date. Multiple conglomerates from across the world have been putting in efforts to establish a strong foothold. This move from Amazon is expected them to provide them an edge over their well equipped competitors like Flipkart and Reliance Retail. Regardless, it is in every party’s good interest that small businesses get represented on these platforms.
