Amazon is determined to amplify small businesses in India. The recently concluded ‘Small business day’ event followed by the upcoming Prime Day is testimony to the fact that the tech giant won’t rest until it has done everything to revive India’s small business sector.
What is Amazon Prime Day?
Prime Day is an online shopping event to be hosted by Amazon between the 26th and 27th of July 2021. It’s a sale event exclusively for Indian shoppers with Prime subscription. This year, Prime Day is significant because it will showcase unique products by small businesses who are listed as sellers on Amazon. Customers will enjoy huge deals and discounts and can browse through regional and handmade products by these small business sellers.
Who is Amazon Prime Day for?
Target consumers for the Amazon Prime Day sale are mainly member shoppers with the Prime subscription. The sale is mainly targeted towards smartphone and consumer goods shoppers. Through this event, Amazon is focused on increasing its Prime membership and subscriptions base. The event is also encouraging small and medium business (SMB) sellers to showcase their wares and take advantage of Amazon’s flagship sale.
Amazon’s initiatives for small businesses
Amazon Launchpad
An initiative that’s part of Prime Day’s push for small businesses, Amazon Launchpad will showcase products driven by innovation from up-and-coming brands.
Amazon Karigar
Amazon Karigar will shed light on sellers listing handmade products like handloom and handicrafts. Artisans and Government Emporiums can join the Amazon Karigar initiative to sell their wares.
Amazon Saheli
Through Amazon Saheli, women entrepreneurs can sell their products. The major categories for products on Amazon Saheli include Clothing, Home Décor, grocery, kids and party supplies by women-led businesses.
Local shops
Local stores will be featured for Amazon Prime Day and verified local shops can target customers in their vicinity with unique product offerings.
Contribution and Coverage by SMB sellers
More than 2400 products will be launched by small businesses for the Prime Day catalogue. As part of the ‘Local shops’ initiative, over 75,000 local seller shops spread across 450 cities in India will be debuting on Amazon. Over 100 small and medium businesses including start-ups, women entrepreneurs, artisans and weavers will be featured on the two prime days.
Prominent categories covered by sellers include home and kitchen, fashion, beauty, jewellery, stationery, lawn and garden, grocery and electronics. Over 50% of the sellers belong to Tier II and III cities. The Amazon Saheli initiative will feature over 90000 products from women-led businesses whereas Amazon Karigar will feature about 272 unique handicrafts.
‘‘
This year, Prime Day is significant because it will showcase unique products by small businesses who are listed as sellers on Amazon.
What’s in it for me?
Through such initiatives by Amazon and other aggregators towards empowering the small business community in India, it is clear that E-commerce is now an amplifier for small business. Local Kirana stores are clearly taking their business online. The absolute small entrepreneurs like local artisans and weavers are adopting e-commerce at an accelerated pace. With local neighbourhood shops joining the e-commerce foray, it is evident that the need for e-commerce is indisputable for small businesses.
With the aggregator’s help, you can position your products from a very strong standpoint and attract big spenders online. Small businesses can be on Amazon even on non-sale days because consumer spends are high on most days. SMBs can revive by acquiring a sizeable chunk of the average consumer spends. Consumer technology and consumer goods have high demand during online sale events and these businesses have a high chance at gaining traction through e-commerce. E-commerce is the biggest hope for small businesses to unlock national and global demand. You need very little investment to scale up on e-commerce.
