Over 1 mn small enterprises shop on Amazon Business during festive sale

The number of buying customers, largest ever for any Amazon Business event, saw a 61% spike compared to Great Indian Festival 2019

Amazon Business, the marketplace for businesses, run by the e-commerce giant has witnessed the biggest ever participation from MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) buyers during its Great Indian Festival (GIF) sale.
 

The month-long GIF began on midnight of October 16 with Prime Early Access and opened up for all customers on October 17. Over the first 7 days, GIF became the biggest ever event for MSMEs on Amazon Business seeing participation of over 1 million MSME buyers.
 

“There is a 2.4X increase in new MSMEs creating an account on Amazon Business,” said Peter George, director, Amazon Business. “Over 50 per cent orders coming from tier-2 and 3 towns.”
 

He said that the company would help MSMEs address all their indirect spends and leverage Amazon Business to plan their short- and long-term purchases. It would also help them improve their operational efficiency.
 

The number of buying customers, largest ever for any Amazon Business event, saw a 61 per cent spike compared to GIF 2019.
 

Customers placed a total of over 355,000 bulk orders. Computers, electronics and large appliances emerged as the top-selling commercial products.
 

“Due to the pandemic, consumers – be it individuals or businesses, continue to look for contactless purchase options,” said Sanjeev Jain, national sales head, Godrej Appliances. “Godrej has witnessed more than 100 per cent growth during this event in the past and we are sure that this year will not be different,” he said.
 

Arpita Mukherjee, procurement manager at Polo Towers Hotel, Agartala, said operating out of Agartala had its own set of unique procurement-related challenges and this had been made even more acute due to the pandemic situation.

“In this scenario, Amazon Business has proven to be useful in helping us procure small and big items for our daily operations,” said Mukherjee. “We recently placed a large order for electric kettles during GIF.”

Customers bought over 15,000 products exclusively from the specially curated stores. These include corporate gifting, work from home, back to work stores designed to meet the various needs of business customers.
 

One of the customers was Bic Cello India, a leading stationery company, which sells over 5 million pens every day. “We see Amazon as a strong e-commerce partner connecting us with leading businesses in India,” said Tanveer Khan, marketing director, Bic Cello India.
 

Top sold categories were laptops, smartphones, TVs and consumer electronics with leading brands being Apple MacBook Air, Redmi Note 9, iPhone 11 and One Plus Y series TV.
 

“We have seen an overwhelming response for our commercial laptop series on Amazon Business at GIF,” said Ashish Sikka, director – SMB, Lenovo India.
 

This festive season, Amazon Business aims to empower MSMEs as a one-stop destination with over 160 million GST (goods and services tax) enabled products across top categories to cater to their distinct business needs.
 

There are now over 370,000 sellers selling to business customers on Amazon Business. The platform also helps MSMEs run their business more efficiently by helping them tackle their indirect spends.
 

This brings down costs and improves the ease of doing business. It brings features such as multi-user accounts and approvals, spend analytics and safe and reliable delivery powered by Amazon’s fulfilment network.