Amazon Great Indian Festival 2020: 100,000+ Local Kirana Stores From 400 Cities Will Deliver Your Orders

Amazon India has been spreading its seller-base vividly across the whole country. It is safe to say that the pandemic has nothing but brought an upscale effect for the e-commerce giant in the country, with masses of offline retailers and kirana stores joining Amazon’s platform.

Amazon Prime Day, conducted from Aug 6 to 7 saw participation from over 91,000 small and medium business sellers, with them generating skyrocketing revenues in just this 2-day event.

We have covered all such numbers in detail, which you can find here.

Now, with the entire country waiting eagerly for the ‘Great Indian Festival’ event, Amazon India has announced and painted a sketch of a participation scenario for SME vendors and retailers, which will nothing but strengthen the ecomm giant’s commitment in the country.

Participation From Over 100,000 Offline Stores

Amazon India announced yesterday that the highly awaited ‘Great Indian Festival’ programme has seen over 100,000 Amazon-enabled local shops, kiranas and neighbourhood stores from across the country.

Of this, over 20,000 offline retailers, kiranas and local shops from the ‘Local Shops on Amazon’ program shall be participating in the Festival for the 1st time ever.

They will be delivering everything, from daily essentials to appliances, home decors and even fresh flowers.

Also, this humongous set of retailers will not just cater to urban and semi-urban cities but everywhere across the country.

Notably, over 40% of such sellers are catering from outside the top 10 cities.

Amazon India’s New Initiatives & Programs Act as a Major Lubricant

As per the VP of Amazon India, Manish Tiwary,

“This festive season we are focused on helping our sellers and other MSME partners grow their business and bounce back from the recent challenges. 

 The integration of Amazon’s programs with 100,000+ ubiquitous neighbourhood stores – for selling online, to help customers buy online, to make deliveries and enable contactless payments – is a testament of the adaptability and inventiveness of Indian entrepreneurs.”

With a commitment to  work closely with the vast network of neighborhood stores across India and integrating ecommerce into their operations, Amazon has been working towards enhancing several such initiatives and programs.

Local Shops on Amazon

Launched only 5 months back in April, this new program has scaled rapidly, with over 20,000 retailers in 400 cities.

With a vision of onboarding offline retailers, kiranas and local shops online, the program today holds thousands of offline retailers from Meerut to Ludhiana, Saharanpur to Surat, Indore to Ernakulum and Kanchipuram.

The highly anticipated Festival will allow millions of Amazon India’s customers to order from their favourite local stores and receive these products either the same day or the next day.

Amazon Easy

Launched especially for ‘new to e-commerce’ customers, this program offers them with assisted shopping experience.

They can place an order on Amazon.in with guided assistance from the store staff and pick up the order from the store or get it delivered at their doorstep.

In an upgraded version, customers can touch and feel the product before purchasing. Although such a store is currently only operational in Bengaluru, they will soon be accessible in different parts of the country.

Amazon Pay Smart Store 

This program enables neighbourhood shops to provide a contactless shopping experience to their customers.

With a base of over 15000 such stores currently enrolled, this program allows customers to simply scan the store’s QR code using the Amazon app, thus letting them to explore all the available products in the store.

They can proceed to buy them through any mode of payment. In fact, they can also convert the amount into an EMI. 

Amazon I Have Space

Launched initially in 2015, Amazon’s flagship ‘I Have Space’ (IHS) delivery program now has over 28,000 neighborhood and kirana stores in about 350 cities.

Under this program, Amazon India helps local stores to deliver products to customers within a 2-4 km radius of the store.