Taking advantage of the unlimited FDI provision for B2B segment in India, Amazon has launched their dedicated portal: AmazonBusiness.in for small business owners and traders in India. Targeting the massive $300 billion B2B market in India, this is Amazon’s first such dedicated portal catering to this segment outside USA. As per estimates, Indian B2B market will touch $700 billion by 2020.
As of now, AmazonBusiness.in has been rolled out in Bangalore, which will be soon expanded to other cities.
Last year, we had reported about speculations regarding such marketplace for Indian businesses and traders which Amazon was working on; which has finally materialized. They have replicated the model of AmazonSupply, which is a similar B2B platform for American SMBs and traders.
Amit Agarwal, country head at Amazon India said while launching this platform: “Small and medium businesses suffered because of inefficiencies in the supplies procurement system. Either the fill rates were poor, or the pricing was not transparent, or the delivery options were inconvenient and vendor lead time was huge. These are the problems we are looking to address.”
Features of AmazonBusiness.in:
As the website suggests, there are mainly four highlights which are being showcased:
– Invite only mode: Hence it’s not open for all. Business owners and traders need to request an invite to be able to procure goods from this market place
– Targeted audience for this portal: Small offices, entrepreneurs, department stores, kirana stores, drugstores, clinics, hospitals, hotels, and restaurants.
– Amazon will negotiate deals with the manufacturers directly, which will benefit the small business owner and trader to procure goods at a discounted, wholesale rates (which distributors and wholesales normally do in offline business)
– Targeted niches as of now: Office Products & Stationery, Cleaning & Housekeeping Supplies, Bed & Bath, Kitchen & Dining, Health & Personal Care, and Food & Beverages. Amazon is claiming that they are listing thousands of products across these categories
– Minimum order which can be placed is Rs 1000.
– Payment can be done via Amazon’s own payment gateway (only net banking has been offered as of now, no credit/debit card or cash of delivery), and door to door delivery of products and goods provisioned, which would be most probably free (being bulk orders)
– Amazon will try to provision credit facility after collaborating with a financial firm
– Valid business license required to be eligible for becoming a member
Here is the full list of FAQs
Industry observers are stating that AmazonBusiness.in is a direct response to counter Alibaba’s growing influence in India.
Alibaba, which is world’s largest B2B platform recently invested $575 million in PayTm to capture the fast growing mobile commerce market, along with signing MoUs with CII to lure SMBs into their portal and starting incubators to tap top rated talent.
On the other hand, Walmart, World’s biggest retail chain has already jumped into the Indian B2B market with their portal BestPriceWholesale.co.in and is looking for some major expansion plans.
Biggies such as Tata is also running their B2B portals, along with legendary B2B leaders such as IndiaMart and TradeIndia cementing their position.
With Amazon’s entry into B2B segment, the market certainly steams up, but it’s the SMBs which will eventually get benefitted.
Good step from Amazon, though Amazon’s competitors are doing great but Amazon is not leaving any space free to be grabbed by others easily.