Prione's 'mission' is to enable 25 mn businesses in e-commerce: CEO Jathar

Company is a joint venture between Amazon and Catamaran Ventures; it is aiming for 20 per cent year-on-year growth.

Prione, a joint venture between Amazon and Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures, has a "mission" to enable 25 million small and medium businesses to grow in e-commerce, its CEO has said.

Pankaj Jathar, who took over recently, likes to run marathons and ride his motorbike. During the coronavirus pandemic, he focused on running early mornings or late evenings depending on his work at Prione. Jathar said the pandemic boosted online retail as it helped small and medium businesses.

“Our mission is to enable 25 million SMBs into e-commerce,” said Jathar, in an interview. “Our belief is that e-commerce is a beneficial channel for SMBs. We will continue to work and help them become successful, expand their footprint, and (increase their) revenue from different aspects of e-commerce.”

Prione, last year, enabled 52,000 SMBs in e-commerce and its goal this year is to assist 100,000 businesses. Prione incorporated in June 2014, with operations in Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai. It has a team of over 700 employees and has a reach in at least 150 Indian cities. 

“We met our goals last year and we are looking at a 20-25 per cent year-on-year growth,” said Jathar.

The firm said it had assisted 2 lakh sellers do better business online and enabled 4 million merchants with digital payment capabilities. Its services include digitising their catalogues and providing support with social media campaigns and advertising. 

“We are moving the imaging into 3D imaging, where we are working with some companies,” said Jathar,  an alumnus of IIM-Calcutta and has a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering. Before Prione, Jathar had worked at companies such as Amazon, Accenture and Tata Interactive Systems.

At Prione, his teams guide SMBs with keywords for optimum visibility and performance on the online marketplace. This includes providing digital payments support through Amazon Pay and assisting SMBs with ‘Amazon Easy Store’, a shopping assistant program. 

“We are working on enabling ‘Easy Store’ across the country,” said Jathar.

Prione helped scale Amazon’s ‘I Have Space’ programme that enables local shops to provide space to store goods for last-mile delivery. Prione assists Amazon Food, the food delivery service, with the onboarding of restaurants. It works with Amazon’s ‘Multi-Seller Flex’ (MSF) to enable sellers in tier-2 and smaller towns. Prione is helping scale up Amazon ‘Local Shops’, a programme launched last year to bring offline retailers, kiranas and local shops online.

At a time when the demand for healthcare products has increased during the pandemic, Prione also enabled a lot of sellers to expand into the essentials category. This included helping them procure products such as oxygen concentrators, thermometers and oximeters.

Another programme, Karigar, an Amazon initiative aims to bring together one of the largest stores to feature a wide range of authentic crafts from Indian artisans. It gives prominence to India’s rich heritage by enabling weavers and artisans to showcase ‘Made in India’ products to customers. Through the Karigar initiative, Prione has enabled master weavers, co-operatives, artisans and Apex bodies (including National Award-winning weavers) to sell online. As part of Karigar, Prione has helped and enabled close to 12 lakh artisans and over 450 crafts online.

Some trade associations perceive Amazon and Flipkart as threats to local retailers and have alleged preferential treatment to select sellers. They have said that Cloudtail, one of the largest sellers on Amazon India website, is owned by Prione. Jathar declined to comment on the matter but said that the sellers and SMBs his company works with are happy with the opportunity e-commerce is bringing them.

“We are educating our sellers or SMBs, to look at e-commerce, as a long term channel that's here to stay,” said Jathar. “It is something that will augment their offline business.”

Sai Global, a consumer electronics retailer in Delhi, is a seller that has benefitted from Prione’s assistance. It took Prione’s support to identify top products such as headphones, smartwatches and Bluetooth earphones from premier brands that could be sold online. A Prione team also helped the seller secure necessary approvals, manage inventory and learn about various marketplace programs to expand their business. Owing to the guidance, Sai Global grew its business to Rs 1.65 crore in a span of 60 days.

Another seller is Json Retail, a furniture manufacturer, with a production facility in Chennai. It manufactures laptop and multi-utility tables, as well as customised products for wholesalers and traders. A Prione team worked with Json to launch their business online and helped them sell inventory worth Rs 50,000 in just two days. As the business grew, the team helped the seller manage inventory, product promotion and warehousing.