Amazon creates 11.6 lakh direct & indirect jobs in MSMEs in India

In Jan 2020, at the first edition of its annual event Amazon Smbhav, the company had pledged to digitise 1 crore (10 million) MSMEs, enable $10 billion in cumulative exports and create 20 lakh (2 million) jobs in India by 2025. Amazon is well on track to fulfil these pledges, while in fact doubling its export pledge from India, to now enable $20 billion in cumulative exports from India by 2025, the company said in a press release.

Last year at Amazon Smbhav 2021, Amazon announced the $250 MM Amazon Smbhav Venture Fund to invest in start-ups and entrepreneurs who are focused on technology innovations. The fund is focused on supporting entrepreneurs and start-ups that are doing innovative work in the area of SMB digitisation. As part of the fund, Amazon has already invested in ‘MyGlamm’, ‘M1xchange’ and ‘Small Case’. Amazon remains committed to leveraging its people and tech resources to invest into focus areas for the Fund, including multiple new and emerging areas that are seeing a high degree of innovation and entrepreneurial energy.

Amazon’s efforts towards digitisation of MSMEs, and boosting exports from the country are helping create tens of thousands of livelihood opportunities in the ecosystem. In the last one year, Amazon helped create over 135K direct and indirect jobs across industries. These jobs are across industries like IT, e-commerce, logistics, manufacturing, content creation, skill development and more as well as other indirect jobs that Amazon has helped create in the seller community.

Amazon is focused on creating a robust infrastructure to help Indian businesses address customers in 200+ countries and territories, create global brands from India and grow exports strongly through its Global Selling program. The program is witnessing rapid momentum and today there are more than one lakh (100K) exporters on the program who are on track to cross $5 billion in cumulative exports. Amazon Global Selling took three years to enable the first billion dollars in cumulative exports and only 17 months to enable the last two billion dollars, according to Amazon.

Amazon has digitised over 4 million MSMEs including sellers, artisans and weavers, delivery and logistics service partners etc. The company’s digitisation efforts are empowering small businesses including local retail stores, artisans and grassroot entrepreneurs to reach their customers and broaden their reach even further. In July 2021, Amazon opened its first Digital Kendra in Surat to bring the benefits of digitisation closer to small businesses. The Kendra has already served over 4000 small businesses from Surat and nearby areas in their digitisation journey.

“We have cumulatively created over 11.6 lakh jobs, enabled nearly $5 billion in exports and digitised over 40 lakh MSMEs in India. As we continue to work with MSMEs across the country, we remain committed to bringing new tools, technology and innovation that will unleash the entrepreneurial spirit of Indian businesses, boost exports from the country and help create jobs at scale. We strongly believe that technology and mobile internet will continue to positively impact India’s economic growth, and we see Amazon playing a larger role in the country’s digital transformation and a modern, thriving digital economy,” Manish Tiwary, country manager, India consumer business, Amazon India, said in a statement.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (GK)