Amazon’s Smart Commerce Will Transform Local Stores Into Digital Dukaan

With India’s eCommerce market growing at a rapid pace, giants like Amazon are introducing new initiatives to empower local sellers and businesses, which will eventually improve its customer penetration in India. Recently, Amazon came up with a new initiative called Smart Commerce. It will help offline stores set up their digital storefronts and in-store shopping experience for their walk-in customers. 

This initiative from Amazon is similar to what was introduced by Shopify, which allows small and medium businesses to set up online stores and enroll themselves on various online marketplaces like Facebook and others. This new program by Amazon is built atop of the Smart Stores initiative, which was launched by the brand couple of years ago. Under this Smart Stores initiative, the Jeff Bezos founded brand helped neighbourhood outlets to serve their customers. 

With the Smart Commerce initiative, Amazon aims to fast-track its pledge to digitize 1 crore small businesses by 2025. Till now, over 1.5 lakh local stores have been selling their products online through the platform. And this Smart Commerce program will help these neighbourhood stores of any size use Amazon’s shopping innovations, logistics, and digital payment systems. With the increase in the number of Amazon’s fulfillment centres and other services, these stores can grow their business.

Speaking about the Smart Commerce plan, Amit Agarwal, SVP of India and Emerging Markets, Amazon, stated that the team is excited to see how neighbourhood stores from all over India are taking advantage of the brand’s Local Shops program to go online and improve their business. He also said that with the launch of the Smart Commerce plan, any store could become truly digital dukaan and serve their customers from remote areas. 

Manish Tiwary, Country Manager, India Consumer Business, Amazon India, said to the media that over the last 2 years, the US eCommerce giant had invested significantly towards the pledge it announced at the inaugural Smbhav Summit, 2020. The brand has already digitized over 40 lakh small businesses and local stores. It has created 1.16 million jobs, both directly and indirectly, in India till now. 

At the Smbhav Summit 2020, Amazon had pledged to generate $10 billion in export from India, digitize 10 million MSMEs, and create 2 million jobs in India by 2025. The company has said that it is working on new plans to fulfill its target beforehand. And recently, according to some data, Amazon has doubled its export pledge to $20 billion from $10 billion in the same time frame.