Amazon India today shared updates on its key pledges for India and announced that it has cumulatively created more than 11.6 lakh (1.16 million) direct and indirect jobs, enabled nearly US$ five billion in cumulative exports, and digitized over 40 lakh (4 million) MSMEs in India till date. In Jan 2020, at the first edition of its annual event Amazon Smbhav, the company had pledged to digitize one crore (10 million) MSMEs, enable $10 billion in cumulative exports and create 20 lakh (two million) jobs in India by 2025. Amazon is well on track to fulfil these pledges, while in fact doubling its export pledge from India, to now enable US$ 20 billion in cumulative exports from India by 2025.
Last year at Amazon Smbhav 2021, Amazon had announced the US$250 MM Amazon Smbhav Venture Fund to invest in startups and entrepreneurs who are focused on technology innovations. The fund is focused on supporting entrepreneurs and startups that are doing innovative work in the area of SMB digitization. As part of the fund, Amazon has already invested in ‘MyGlamm’, ‘M1xchange’ and ‘Small Case’. Amazon remains committed to leveraging its people and tech resources to invest into focus areas for the Fund, including multiple new and emerging areas that are seeing high degree of innovation and entrepreneurial energy.
Manish Tiwary, Country Manager, India Consumer Business, Amazon India said, “We have cumulatively created over 11.6 lakh jobs, enabled nearly US$ five billion in exports and digitized 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.”
Amazon’s efforts towards digitization 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 has digitized over four million MSMEs including sellers, artisans and weavers, delivery and logistics service partners etc. The Company’s digitization 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 digitization closer to small businesses. The Kendra has already served over 4000 small businesses from Surat and nearby areas in their digitization journey.