Amit Agarwal, Senior Vice President (SVP) of India and Emerging Markets, Amazon said the company has partnered with the Indian postal service and the Indian Railways.
The announcement was made at Smbhav, derived from the word Sambhav in Hindi, which is Amazon’s event focused on educating Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) on the opportunities that technology makes possible.
First-of-its-kind dedicated freight corridor
Through this partnership it will establish a dedicated freight corridor which Amazon will use to speed up deliveries for its seller partners.
“We have been partners with the Indian postal service for a while.
This will create the first-of-its-kind, seamless, integrated cross-border logistics solution.
Now, the idea of somebody sitting in the corner of the country (India) can ship products to customers in New York just becomes more real,” Agarwal said at the event.
He shared that the partnership with the Indian Railways for a dedicated freight corridor is the first-of-its-kind for any e-commerce company.
Gen-AI powered assistance
Amazon is also hopping on the generative AI bandwagon as it announced Sahay, meant to help even small businesses in the country access and benefit from the power of generative AI.
“It’s a great way for sellers to ask questions. Whether they want to register, list items, get help, expand sales and be more successful, Sahay will help.
“I’m very excited to bring the power of generative AI to Indian small and medium businesses starting now and that should be pervasive going forward as well,” Agarwal said.
Transformation through AI
They expect this technology to lead to a complete transformation of the business.
“We think in the next 10 years, there won’t be any aspect of our business that won’t be transformed in some meaningful way by this (generative AI).
There won’t be any way that we do our business today that AI won’t transform,” Russell Grandinetti, SVP – International Consumer at Amazon spoke at the event.
Job creation in India
Since June 5, 2013, when it first opened here, the company cumulatively created over 13 lakh direct and indirect jobs across e-commerce, logistics, manufacturing, content creation, skill development and others.
Country head Manish Tiwary said, “Of the 13 lakh jobs, 1.4 lakh jobs were created in just the last one year”.
Support for small businesses and startups
Outside of its offerings in India, it has also been hard at work at supporting MSMEs by way of job creation, investment pledges and digitisation.
By this time last year, Amazon had digitised 4 million (40 lakh) small businesses and the base has now increased to around 6.2 million (62 lakh), Tiwary said on August 31.
It plans to digitise 10 million small businesses, enable $20 billion in exports and create 2 million jobs by 2025.
Recently it announced Amazon Smbhav through which it has invested in startups like Cashify, FreshToHome and others.
Investment in India
Over the decade of its business in India, Amazon has invested over $6.5 billion to grow various segments such as e-commerce and video-streaming through Prime.
CEO Andy Jassy said it would invest an additional $15 billion in India by 2030, taking its total investment commitments in the country to $26 billion across businesses.
This includes the $12.7 billion that Amazon Web Services (AWS) said it would invest in India by 2030.
