BENGALURU: Amazon India announced the launch of its first Digital Kendra on Thursday in Surat, Gujarat. As physical resource centers, these kendras will offer MSMEs the opportunity to learn more on e-commerce and avail services such as shipping and logistics support, digital marketing services, GST and taxation support to kickstart their journey as digital entrepreneurs.
The company had last year in January announced $1 billion investment to digitise 10 million Indian MSMEs over the following five years. During its inaugural Smbhav event in January 2020, Amazon Founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos had said that “Amazon will invest an incremental $1 billion to digitise micro and small businesses in cities, towns, and villages across India, helping them reach more customers than ever before. This initiative will use Amazon’s global footprint to create 10 billion dollars in India exports by 2025.”
“This is an important step towards the commitment we have made to digitise MSMEs. Our thought process was that if Amazon can go down to these MSME clusters and handhold them through their journey of digitisation, it will help small businesses take their first steps towards e-commerce. Our trained resource partners will take these MSMEs through all the services and various programs which Amazon provides,” said Manish Tiwary, vice president at Amazon India.
