Amazon India's 'Local Shops' program racks up 50,000 offline retailers
What's the story
E-commerce giant Amazon said that more than 50,000 offline stores and neighborhood kirana shops across 450 cities in the country are now a part of its 'Local Shops' program. Local Shops was launched in April 2020 with the objective of encouraging small offline sellers and brands to sell through Amazon India. Here are more details.
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Initiative saw 20,000 merchants selling online during Amazon's sale
The initiative enabled more than 20,000 sellers to sell their products online during Amazon India's Great Indian Festival sale in October 2020. Amazon claims the program supplements a store's existing walk-in customer volume with a digital presence. Customers can discover products online from shops in their vicinity. The sellers offer furniture, flowers, electronics, books, and toys, in addition to home and kitchen products.
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Local Shops saw participation from brick-and-mortar retailers in smaller cities
Notably, Local Shops saw participation from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities such as Sangli, Osmanabad, Jamnagar, Gorakhpur, Jabalpur, Ratlam, Bikaner, Tumkur, and Jalpaiguri. Amazon India VP Manish Tiwary said the program started as a pilot but it now allows offline retailers to benefit from technology. He remarked that the growth of the program to 50,000 sellers in less than a year is rapid.
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Meanwhile, ahead of International Women's Day, Amazon announced a special online store launched in collaboration with UN Women. The store will exclusively feature products made available by women-owned businesses. Amazon said that more than 450 women-led enterprises and over 2,80,000 women entrepreneurs and artisans from Amazon Saheli are likely to be benefited by the new online store.
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Products across wide variety of categories gained traction online
In terms of number of shops per state, Maharashtra, Delhi, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan topped the list. Meanwhile, cities such as Delhi, Surat, Jaipur, Bengaluru, and Mumbai had the most number of Local Shops. The product categories which gained the most traction on Local Shops were grocery, kitchen products, appliances, beauty products, consumer electronics, home items, furniture, industrial supplies, apparel, and wireless accessories.