Amazon India charts out B2B plan to take on global rival Alibaba

Amazon India is on a massive drive to increase its reach and services of business to business (B2B) arm in the country in a bid to take on global rival Alibaba.

Launched two years back, its India business has grown at 200 per cent year over year, said Peter George, director, Amazon Business India. Amazon is running its B2B operations in eight countries and is systematically increasing the number.

Amazon B2B at present caters mostly to small and medium enterprises, major firms such as GE, Qualcomm globally and online food delivery firms such as Zomato and Swiggy in India. Now, the company is widening its network by adding more than 200,000 sellers, newer verticals in the office supplies and electronics space, and expanding on its logistics.

From office supplies, desktops, to break room supplies, Amazon B2B is competing with Alibaba in many of the areas where the Chinese conglomerate runs its B2B operations.

“The Amazon B2B marketplace merges the experience and convenience of shopping on Amazon.in with features required specifically by businesses. This includes business only pricing, quantity discount on bulk orders and business invoices to claim GSTIN credit and tax deductions,” said George.

Its B2B business has more than 240,000 sellers in India. “We want to increase the number to almost 450,000-plus by the end of this year. This is needed to increase the product portfolio as well as the reach of our B2B business,” he said.

The company claims it is giving a good range of services to customers, including providing GST invoices to claim input tax credit and up to 28 per cent on purchases.

“We also provide sellers insights into business spends and analyse with customised reports. They can also tap the sales demand from customers who have higher buying behaviour than a regular B2C customer,” added George.

Globally, the B2B business for Amazon stands at around $10 billion. While the B2B business is small in India, the company is going for major expansion and is also piloting an offline outreach programme to bring in more customers.

The company is piloting the use of marketing executives who would be reaching out to SMBs and firms to try its B2B platform. While this is still at an experimental stage the company might expand on the operation in the months to come.

On the logistics front, while same fulfilment centres (FC) that are used for business to consumer (B2C) operations are being used for its B2B arm, things might change if the operations expand. While Amazon has been running a pilot on operating a B2B only FC in US, no plans are there to start a similar plan in India.

Business factsheet

160 million: Total GST enabled selection

240,000: Number of sellers

200%: Sales growth year over year

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