Expressnews
Chennai, Sep. 2023
Launched in September 2017, Amazon Business completes six years of empowering business customers in India this year, helping them with seamless and efficient e-procurement. Since its inception, Amazon Business has aimed to transform the way businesses buy and sell online. With more than 19cr GST across 10 lakhs+ sellers, Amazon Business, today, caters to 99.5% pin codes across the country and has created a one-stop destination for all business buying needs with features to support request for quote on bulk orders, shipping across multiple addresses, and more. All of this, can be done on the go on Amazon Business’ IOS and Android optimized mobile app.To commemorate the six years, Amazon Business alsoannounced its integration with Amazon Pay Later to provide a virtual credit to eligible business customers. The government of India’s aim to revamp the Credit Guarantee Scheme for MSME sector during the Budget 2023-24 highlighted the need for credit availability for MSMEs toscale their operations. This integration with Amazon PayLater to offer virtual credit to eligible customers will propel Amazon Business’ aim to digitize business customers across the country and play a crucial role in scaling theircredit availability to MSMEs while ensuring a hassle-freepayment experience
With Amazon Pay Later, business customers will be ableto digitally sign up and get access to instant credit, therebymaking seamless purchases on products acrosscategories. In addition to an uninterrupted paymentexperience, they will also be able to use this credit tomake bill payments on Amazon.in, buy Amazon Paycorporate gift cards, travel, insurance and much more. Theinitiative is aimed to help customers extend their monthlybudgets for bulk purchases of products ranging from daily essentials, electronics, to corporate gifts for their businesses. The credit utilized can be successfully repaid in the subsequent month at no additional fees, or through easy EMIs up to 12 months at nominal interest rates withno hidden charges involved.
Commenting on this milestone and development, Suchit Subhas, Director, Amazon Business said, “We are grateful for the support we have received from our customers and selling partners in the past six years of our operations in India. Since inception, we have alwaysaimed to bring together the largest assortment of GSTenabled selection with competitive & transparent pricing, widest delivery coverage and innovations in digital procurement to make buying simple and efficient for businesses. Keeping our customers at the forefront, we are happy to introduce Amazon Pay Later to provide themaccess to credit, thereby ensuring greater affordability for them.”
The journey of Amazon Business has been focused on driving digitization for its customers and simplifying theirprocurement process. Keeping up with their evolvingneeds, it has continued to innovate and add featuresincluding ‘Bill to Ship to’ allowing customers to claim GSTcredit on their billing address for their pan-India shipments.In early 2022, it also launched the Android and iOS optimized mobile app specifically designed to improve the procurement experience of business customers on the go. For the seller partners, Amazon Business also provides an additional opportunity on Amazon.in to scale their B2B business by catering to requirements of lakhs of business customers and grow their revenues. Features such as ‘Request for Quantity Discount’ and discounts on bulk purchase help sellers cater to lakhs of orders frombusinesses across the country.
This customer centricity has enabled Amazon Business togrow exponentially in the last 6 years. It has seen CAGRof 150% increase in customers and 145% increase in sales. Tier 2 and tier 3 cities also played a significant role to this growth, with 65% buying customers coming fromsmaller cities. Over the past years, 33% of our customersare loyal buyers who repeatedly come to AmazonBusiness for their purchases with 60% of them from Tier 2& 3 cities. As part of the anniversary offer businesscustomers can also avail attractive discounts andincremental cashbacks on Amazon Business.
