Amazon gearing up for sales season with backing of kiranas

Ahead of the festive season, over 100,000 Amazonenabled local shops, kiranas, and neighbourhood stores from across India are geared up to serve customers. More than 20,000 offline retailers and kiranas from ‘Local Shops on Amazon’ programme will be participating in their first ‘Great Indian Festival’ sale event this month.

Amazon said the programme has scaled rapidly in just five months; with more than 40 per cent of the sellers coming from outside the top 10 cities.

“This festive season we are focused on helping our sellers and other MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) partners grow their business and bounce back from the recent challenges,” said Manish Tiwary, vice president, Amazon India. “In the past few months, we have seen businesses of all sizes increasingly adopting the technology. We hope that this Great Indian Festival will bring them growth and success as they get ready to serve millions across India.”

Local Shops on Amazon is a programme that was launched in April to help bring offline retailers, kiranas, and local shops online. Today, thousands of offline retailers from Meerut to Ludhiana, Saharanpur to Surat, Indore to Ernakulam and Kanchipuram are part of the programme. This festive season Amazon customers will be able to shop from some of their favourite local stores in their cities and get deliveries the same or next day.

Since joining Local Shops on Amazon, Sakshi Khandelwal, who runs Shiv Electronics store in northwest Delhi, is now able to tap customers located far from her shop. “We have seen our online business grow month on month, but more importantly this programme offers us greater control over the inventory and delivery of the products,” said Khandelwal.