Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Amazon India has preponed its flagship annual month-long sale event Great Indian Festival to October 3, 2021, from October 4. The announcement was made after Flipkart preponed dates for its Big Billion Days sale to October 3-10 from earlier October 7-12. According to the company, Amazon’s over 8.5 lakh sellers across the country including over 75,000 local shops from 450 cities and other sellers under various Amazon programmes such as Amazon Launchpad, Amazon Saheli, Amazon Karigar would participate in the sale.
“This is the first big Diwali for sellers associated with the Local Shops on Amazon programme as the programme itself is hardly 18 months old. That’s the big news in this year’s sale. Also, as we are celebrating the anniversary of our wholesale marketplace Amazon Business, we are running a special sale for businesses registered with the Amazon Business. The sale will run from September 24-29 and customers will get close to 20 per cent cashback when they shop. We have close to 400,000 sellers on Amazon Business and close to 15 crore GST-enabled SKUs,” Manish Tiwary, Vice President, Amazon India told Financial Express Online.
Amazon, in a statement, said MSME buyers can save 28 per cent more on their business purchases from Amazon’s B2B online wholesale marketplace Amazon Business with GST invoice, bulk discounts, exclusive deals, lower festive price offers, cashback, rewards, and more, for their regular business buying or corporate gifting for clients or employees. The savings with GST invoice will be on all transactions across categories like laptops, printers, networking devices, office electronics, vacuum cleaners, etc. from top brands like HP, Lenovo, Canon, Godrej, Casio, Eureka Forbes, and more.
“The lead-up to the programme for small business will put the latter onto an early start during the sale. More MSMEs are coming from Tier-II towns on Amazon even as close to 50 per cent of our overall more than 8.5 lakh sellers are based in such towns. The share might go up to 60-65 per cent by next year Diwali. Moreover, D2C brands on our marketplace are seeing an upsurge since the pandemic started. The number of such brands succeeding is growing by the day now and they will play a very significant role this Diwali,” added Tiwary.
According to an Amazon survey conducted by Nielsen between August 30 and September 9, 2021, 78 per cent of 1,965 sellers surveyed mentioned reaching out to new customers while 71 per cent expected an increase in sales. The survey noted that 62 per cent sellers expected an increase in visibility of products while 71 per cent mentioned business recovery post lockdown.
The company said its customers will have options with Amazon Pay ICICI Bank credit card to get 5 per cent reward points with Rs 750 as a joining bonus, while signing up for Amazon Pay Later will get them Rs 150 back along with instant credit up to Rs 60,000, and rewards worth Rs 1000 back for customers who use Rs 1000 gift cards, and more. In order to enhance last-mile deliveries, Amazon has created over 1.10 lakh seasonal job opportunities across its operations network and expanded its fulfillment network with a 40 per cent increase in storage capacity through more than 60 fulfilment centres offering 43 million cubic feet of space to sellers.
