Amazon Business, the marketplace that Amazon hones and specifically offers to B2B sellers and SMEs to sell to each other will be expanding to India. With immediate effect, there will be a dedicated forum for businesses who want to sell to other business in India.
Manish Tiwary is vice president of Amazon India and she says: “This is basically a marketplace to serve the needs of small and medium businesses. The idea was quite simple. We get a lot of feedback from our 220,000-odd sellers who reach out to us and want to buy stuff from our B2C marketplace. As you’re aware, we keep quantity limits on our consumer marketplace. What we’ve gathered is that lots of small businesses struggle to meet their procurement needs in a seamless manner. We will have business prices here that will be different from the prices we offer our customers on our B2C marketplace. More importantly, we will give quantity discounts.”
Two things are important about this move. Firstly, Amazon continues to invest and focus on India. It’s a key ecommerce market and offers an opportunity for significant long-term growth. It’s the second most populous country in the world, the globe’s biggest democracy and is also (to a great extent) English speaking. And, unlike China, it is broadly interested in trading freely with the Western world.
Secondly, it is good to see that Amazon is looking to SMEs and entrepreneurs in India. It’s a rich seam with huge potential. And whilst it might be nascent, it’s also good to look ahead and invest in the future. It doesn’t strike us as unlikely that India will become a huge and booming ecommerce market in due course that will eclipse Europe and America.
The launch of Amazon Business in India could well prove to be an prescient move.
