Nagpur:
Truly, the world today is a ‘global village’. This phrase came in vogue after international travel became very easy and affordable too. The ease of traversing the seven seas made the world seem physically smaller, thus global ‘village’.
Now with the internet and ease of doing e commerce the village has grown into the world again – because opportunities have expanded and horizons multiplied manifold.
Just to give an instance – Dr. Yawalkar was celebrating his 90th birthday but his grandson Nikhil, living in Bangalore could not attend. He wanted to send a special gift to his grandpa, which did not consist of the usual cake,flowers or bottle of champagne. When the gift arrived, everyone was very curious about what it contained because of the way it was packed.
Very expertly, but not the usual packaging. When it was opened it contained a little 3 years old Bonsai Ficus plant growing in a beautiful ceramic container!
The Bonsai was created by a lady in Hyderabad,but the selling and shipping had been done by Amazon. Forget the container being undamaged, even the delicate bonsai with exposed roots had not a leaf that was crushed – despite being shipped from 700 miles away. And it reached bang on the morning of the birthday! That is the power of the Amazon platform.
Amazon India’s Director for Sellers and Products, Ram Papatla, based in Bangalore, was in Nagpur hoping to attract Sellers from the area to try out the Amazon platform to market their merchandise all over the country, even the world.
“We heard Nagpur is a good place for sourcing Handlooms, textiles and even hand crafted goods; if you have the skills, come to us for the selling” said Ram.
Amazon, a twenty year old company originating from Seattle, USA has registered its presence in India since two years. As they claim, since its launch in June 2013, Amazon.in has impacted and transformed the way India buys and the way India sells. The company offers sellers, specially from the small and medium business sector a trusted, fast growing, scalable and robust platform to grow. And grow at an amazing pace, which would not have been possible, but for e commerce companies giving you a ‘leg up’,
Amazon has already impacted the lives of over 1,00,000 sellers across the country by providing them a plethora of services – a menu of different options that can fit into any business model.
Right from Self Service Registration (SSR) that enables you to register yourself as a seller and start tapping into their markets, with expert help every step of the way to actually beginning Selling on Amazon ( SOA) are two steps that anyone can take in the minimum possible time.
The deal you get is there are no product listing fees, no upfront costs of creating a website – and you get a market to tap into without the hassle and investment of opening a physical store/ shop. What’s more, you even get a secure payment infrastructure.
Once you become an Amazon Seller, you can avail of Amazon Easy Ship assisted shipping services wherein sellers can benefit from Amazon’s investments in logistics to have their orders shipped straight from their own warehouses. More than 22,600 sellers are using this service already.
The next option is selling through warehouses mantained by Amazon that is called ‘Fulfillment by Amazon’. Amazon already has 12 warehouses, which they call ‘Fulfillment Centres’ for storage and dispatch. Once the order is serviced, payment is again through Pay by Amazon offering the benefit of a credible, international brand to both sellers and buyers. Thus the seller is not left wondering when my payment will come – if he opts for payment on delivery – and the customer is not left in suspense about ” paisa toh gaya, maal kab or kaisa milega?”
Recently Amazon has also introduced an ap – Amazon Seller App – for the seller on the go. This innovative app enables direct buyer-seller communication, order notification, order details, shipment confirmation and order fulfillment notifications through mobile services. What’s more if you stumble at any step and need help, you can press the help wanted button and believe it or not – I tested this myself! – you get a call from Amazon in 3 seconds flat!!!
So deeply committed is Amazon to helping buyers and sellers exploit their domain most gainfully that they have come up with an education program called Seller University.
Under this program, Amazon runs an online education program for educating sellers to enroll, manage and grow their business profitably. Even Seller Forums have been launched enabling Seller to Seller contact and collaboration. E commerce trained Amazon specialists (called ATES) are accessible to sellers who are not yet online savvy or constrained by time. The company has presently trained over 1200 specialists and introduced them to over 4000 sellers.
The next step is introducing world markets to Indian sellers, opening the doors for Indian business’ to export to e commerce markets of the world staring with listing on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. The program is already in place allowing export of products in the Apparel, Home furnishing, Handicrafts, Jewelry, Books, Sporting goods, Handbags, Shoes. Health and Beauty product categories.
We had grown up hearing the phrase – the sky is the limit. With Amazon, Make in India will get limitless skies to fly in… that is the plan, and for doubting Thomas’ like me, the proof is in the pudding. Thousands are benefiting already – what are you waiting for?
…Sunita Mudaliar – Associate Editor
