Now Amazon sellers may clear doubts, share e-commerce learnings with peers under this new programme

Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Sellers on Amazon in India will now be able to share their learnings on selling goods online with other sellers under the e-commerce company’s new programme Amazon Saathi. The peer mentorship programme will allow its experienced sellers to share and access content on the knowledge-sharing platform with new or emerging sellers to help them sell better to Indian consumers. “We are launching Amazon Saathi after a lot of research and feedback from sellers on having a platform for knowledge sharing and networking amongst them,” Pranav Bhasin, Director MSME & Seller Experience, Amazon India said in a statement. The company said it has already conducted a pilot for the programme over the past eight months with more than 50 Saathi ‘mentors’ who have interacted with more than 41,000 aspiring and existing entrepreneurs.

During the pilot, Amazon leveraged its online events and hangouts, blog articles, and social media communities to accumulate content across various topics to help sellers around different areas. Existing sellers may also volunteer to mentor other sellers on the Amazon Saathi portal but would not receive any financial incentive for this. The latest benefits come a month after Amazon announced a performance-improvement and level-based benefits programme – STEP to help sellers ramp up their business on the marketplace. “Customized and actionable recommendations” to sellers to improve “key customer experience metrics” and benefits such as fee waivers, faster disbursement cycles, priority seller support, and free account management would be available for sellers under the programme.

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Engaged in an e-commerce slugfest with Walmart’s Flipkart, the two marketplaces have been undertaking different programmes to get more sellers to the platform. Amazon and Flipkart had also tied-up with various state governments such as Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Assam, Karnataka, Jammu & Kashmir etc., in the past to help local businesses including artisans, craftsmen, and other micro-enterprises sell online through structured mentoring and handholding support. Amazon India’s marketplace, which enables such sellers to reach out to customers, had posted 9.5 per cent decline in losses in FY19 to Rs 5,685 crore from Rs 6,287.9 crore in FY18 while revenues grew 55 per cent to Rs 7,778 crore in FY19.