Amazon India launched its first Digital Kendra, a brick and mortar resource centre that will assist kiranas and small enterprises to go digital, in Surat, Gujarat.
Digital Kendra would help MSMEs grow their businesses with the adoption of technology and play a more important role in the revival and growth of the Indian economy. This would be a national initiative, said Amazon.
Amit Agarwal, global senior VP and country head, Amazon India in a virtual media conference on Wednesday said the last 15 months have seen a tremendous acceleration of technology and that in turn created a large number of digital entrepreneurs in India.
“This is an earnest endeavor to bring the right tools, support and services infrastructure closer to where MSMEs are based and help them benefit from ecommerce,’’ he added.
The etailer had earlier said it would invest $1 billion in India to help digitise 10 million MSMEs by 2025.
Vijay Rupani, Chief Minister, Gujarat said, “ This is an important move especially when MSMEs are looking at reviving and rebuilding their businesses after the recent challenges. Initiatives like these have a multiplier effect in enabling our MSMEs to play a big role in taking India towards its vision of being a $5 trillion economy.’’
Digital Kendra offers assistance and training on ecommerce, GST and taxation, shipping and logistics, cataloging and digital marketing.
Manish Tiwary, vice president, Amazon India, some 200,000 new sellers, kiranas stores have joined the Amazon platform from January 2020. The company claimed it had created over a million direct and indirect jobs in the country so far.