Published On : Tue, Jul 21st, 2015

Together, we can change the Indian Commerce-Scape completely, says Ram Papatla of Amazon

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Nagpur:

“I obsess over how to make life easy for every Indian, whether he is a consumer or a seller… that is my mission in life” says Ram Papatla with such conviction in his life, you have to pay attention.

Coming from Hyderabad, Ram seems to have lived and experienced growing up situations all over India.

When I questioned him about how, life can be made easier, when each day it seems to get more complicated and complex, he says simply ” think of a small satellite town near Nagpur, somewhere in MIHAN/ Butibori… you have school going children. Come June, you will have to make a hundred trips to the city to buy their uniforms, their books, their school bags, their water bags, shoes and even raincoats. If all these vendors you go to, ( like Milton in Dharampeth, Salpekar Book depot in Sitabaldi etc. etc. ) begin selling online through a portal like Amazon, you can sit in the comfort of your home , or with a cell phone, even in your office, and make all the purchases online.”

Or, he says, citing the example of a lady in Chennai ” you have a real talent with making soft toys. You design them, you use the best ingredients and have them made under your supervision. When it comes to marketing them, you either would have to open your open shop, or even if you have your own portal to market it online it would entail the cost of designing a web site and then marketing it. With Amazon all that is taken care of… this lady came to us and her turn over is already over Rs one crore annually! Now she doesn’t bother with maintaining an inventory at home either, she has off sourced that to Amazon as well!”

Amazon is full of such success stories. Stories that have changed lives. Inspired many others to venture into hitherto unknown territories using the back up of Amazon.

With their gamut of services to sellers as well as buyers, Amazon has already made its presence felt in 13 other countries of the world.

In Asia, they came to Japan and China before venturing into India.

Ram and his team agrees that it is still a nascent, even dormant market, e companies exist but are still struggling to find the bottom line.

“With time, the markets will mature and stabilize… it will be a win-win situation for all. Just watch and wait” they say.

They are very gung ho about India, now that they are here. With the world’s youngest population, who is not?

That is why they have not only gone into aiding e commerce but also, in a way, branched out in to education to help train ordinary people to be more internet savvy and use apps on smart phones to do business.

Thus the Seller University, Seller forums and creating a pool of thousands of people who can help others learn the ropes of the trade.

As they see it India is a growing digital economy and Nagpur being at the epi centre of the country will soon be at the vortex of this change in doing business too!