Amazon launches Digital Kendra to empower Indian businesses with e-commerce

It will help MSMEs recover their businesses from the recent challenges, bring benefits of e-commerce and help them reach customers in India and globally.

E-commerce giant Amazon has launched  its first Digital Kendra in India in Surat, Gujarat. Amazon Digital Kendras are brick and mortar resource centers that will provide micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) the opportunity to learn about the benefits of e-commerce.

They can avail a range of third party services such as shipping and logistics support, cataloging assistance, digital marketing services, GST (goods and services tax) and taxation support to kick start their journey towards being digital entrepreneurs. The initiative is in line with its commitment to digitally enable 10 million MSMEs

“Last year at Smbhav, we had announced that Amazon will invest $1 billion in India to help digitize 10 million Indian MSMEs by 2025,” said Amit Agarwal, Senior VP and Country Head, Amazon India. “And today, we take one more important step towards that goal as we open our first Amazon Digital Kendra in Surat, Gujarat. This is an earnest endeavour to bring the right tools, support and services infrastructure closer to where MSMEs are based and help them benefit from e-commerce. Amazon Digital Kendra will help MSMEs grow their business with adoption of technology and play an even more important role in the revival and growth of the Indian economy.”

Inaugurating the Amazon Digital Kendra, Vijay Rupani, Chief Minister of Gujarat said Amazon India’s initiative will help equip MSMEs with the right knowledge, skills and support to benefit from technology adoption and e-commerce.

“This is even more important as MSMEs look at reviving and rebuilding their businesses after the recent challenges,” said Rupani. “Initiatives like these have a multiplier effect in enabling our MSMEs to play a big role in taking India towards its vision of being a $5 trillion economy.”

Amazon will engage with local partners to set up and manage the Digital Kendras. It will provide local partners additional revenue streams while playing an integral role in creating greater awareness and understanding of e-commerce. It would help provide the understanding of the export markets, and offer MSMEs the tools to grow their business.

Manish Tiwary, vice president, Amazon India said the firm came up with the idea of Digital Kendra, as it wanted to bridge the gap for MSMEs across the country to digitally enable them and help them transition into digital entrepreneurs along with their offline businesses. It would also help them reach customers in India and globally.

“This was a step required to remove the friction for (businesses) who have never done business or accepted payments online.I really feel that this would act as the bridge to get to train and handhold them,” said Tiwary.

MSMEs can visit the Amazon Digital Kendra and avail third party services including training on benefits of ecommerce, GST and taxation support, shipping and logistics support, cataloging assistance and digital marketing services.

It will also provide opportunity for MSMEs to avail onboarding services if they are interested in registering as sellers on Amazon.in or engaging with other Amazon programs such as Amazon Global Selling, Amazon Pay, Amazon Karigar, Amazon Saheli ‘I Have Space’, and ‘Amazon Easy’.

“We are going to set up (Digital Kendra)  across clusters which have a very high density of MSMEs,” said Tiwary.  “We believe it will play a very very critical role in enabling MSMEs to go online and increase and improve their business. It would help us meet our pledge of digitising 10 million MSMEs, by 2025.”

Last year at the inaugural Smbhav Summit, Amazon had announced three important commitments - to digitally enable 10 million MSMEs, enable ecommerce exports worth $10 billion and create 1 million additional jobs in India between 2020 and 2025. The company is on track to fulfil these commitments and has already digitized 2.5 million MSMEs, enabled cumulative exports worth $3 billion and helped create nearly 1 million jobs in India till date including 300,000 direct and indirect jobs since January 2020.