Amazon India announced the launch of its first Digital Kendra on Thursday in Surat, Gujarat. As physical resource centers, these kendras will offer MSMEs the opportunity to learn more on e-commerce and avail services such as shipping and logistics support, digital marketing services, GST and taxation support to kickstart their journey as digital entrepreneurs.
Inaugurating the Amazon Digital Kendra, Vijay Rupani, Chief Minister of Gujarat said that such an initiative assumes even more significance as MSMEs look at reviving and rebuilding their businesses after the recent challenges. “Initiatives like these have a multiplier effect in enabling our MSMEs to play a big role in taking India towards its vision of being a $5 trillion economy. We need to empower and enable MSMEs to play an even stronger role in the Indian economy in the future. I am happy that the first Amazon Digital Kendra has come up here in Surat, which is home to thousands of MSMEs and traders.”
Amazon will engage with local partners to set up and manage these Digital Kendras. It will provide local partners additional revenue streams while creating greater awareness and understanding of e-commerce, understanding the exports markets, and offer MSMEs the tools to expand their business. Amazon Digital Kendra will also present the opportunity for MSMEs to avail onboarding services if they are interested in registering as sellers on Amazon.in or engaging with other Amazon programmes such as Amazon Global Selling, Amazon Pay, Amazon Karigar, Amazon Saheli, I Have Space and Amazon Easy.
Speaking at the launch, Amit Agarwal, Senior VP and Country Head, Amazon India highlighted how technology adoption has been accelerated in the last 12-15 months. “As the country emerges from the pandemic, I firmly believe digital transformation will play a huge role in making us future ready,” he stated.
Elaborating on how Gujarat is a manufacturing powerhouse, Agarwal said that Surat is one of the key MSME hubs in the state. With the right technology tools the MSME sector can catapult into an even stronger contributor to economic growth of the country and realise the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat, he added. “Last year at Smbhav, we had announced that Amazon will invest $1 billion in India to help digitise 10 million Indian MSMEs by 2025. And today, we take one more step towards that goal. This is an earnest endeavor to bring the right tools, support and services infrastructure closer to where MSMEs are based and help them benefit from ecommerce. It will help MSMEs grow their business with adoption of technology and play an even more important role in the revival and growth of the Indian economy,” he asserted.
Last year at the inaugural Smbhav Summit, Amazon had announced three important commitments – to digitally enable 10 million MSMEs, enable ecommerce exports worth $10 billion and create one million additional jobs in India between 2020 and 2025. The company has already digitised 2.5 million MSMEs, enabled cumulative exports worth $3 billion and helped create nearly a million jobs in India till date including 300,000 direct and indirect jobs since January 2020.
https://m.economictimes.com/small-biz/sme-sector/amazon-sets-up-its-first-digital-kendra-in-surat/amp_articleshow/84228796.cms
