In Pic: Mr. Gopal Pillai Director & GM – Seller Services, Amazon India with Amazon Tatkal Van in Chennai.
Make way for Amazon Tatkal, a unique service-on-wheels for SMBs from Amazon.in
Amazon Tatkal enables SMBs in Chennai to sell on Amazon.in within 60 minutes
Chennai, March 29, 2016: In line with its vision to transform the way India sells, Amazon.in brings Amazon Tatkal, a unique initiative to help thousands of small & medium businesses (SMBs) to Chennai. A one-stop-shop on the go, Amazon Tatkal enables SMBs to get online and sell on Amazon.in, in less than 60 minutes.
Amazon Tatkal is a specially designed studio-on-wheels offering a suite of launch services including registration, imaging and cataloguing services, as well as basic seller training mechanisms. It will enable thousands of interested sellers to start selling on Amazon.in in real time and experience the benefits of launching an online business.
Amazon Tatkal has been stationed in Chennai since Friday, March 25. The special van has covered markets such as Vadalpani, Porur, Anna Nagar, Ambattur, Richie Street and Triplicane. Today, March 29, the van will be stationed at Sowcarpet&Tondiarpet. Tomorrow, March 30, it will cover Kodambaakam& T Nagar. After Chennai, the van will traverse the entire country, engaging with thousands of entrepreneurs, artisans, manufacturers and sellers and help them sell online on the spot.
Talking about the concept, Mr. Gopal Pillai, Director & GM – Seller Services, Amazon India said “Our conversations with hundreds of SMBs reveal that there is a high level of interest among them to get online and start selling, but they are unable to overcome perception barriers of the process being time consuming, tedious and complex. As a result many interested sellers tend to put off onboarding tasks. As always, we worked backwards from seller needs and conceptualized Amazon Tatkal. We believe this initiative will help sellers to overcome these constraints,get them onboard, and start selling on the Amazon platform with speed and ease.”
Amazon Tatkal will visit seller-dense pockets across multiple cities in the country and engage with local businesses over the next several months. Specially trained company representatives will educate sellers on the benefits of selling online, introduce them to the specialised seller services offered by Amazon.in including innovations like Easy Ship, Fulfilment by Amazon as well as Global Selling and launch interested sellers on the Amazon platform, helping them with on-the-spot imaging and cataloguing tasks.
“We are very excited to see the high level of interest and enthusiasm from sellers to get online and benefit from the digital economy. A number of sellers on Amazon.in witnessed a growth of 250% (YOY) last year. We believe that initiatives like Amazon Tatkal will help thousands of SMEs in the country to experience the ease and convenience of selling on the Amazon.in marketplace in a matter of 60 minutes,” adds Pillai.
Since its launch in June 2013, Amazon.in has been working extensively to launch services that meet different business requirements of sellers and help them grow their business profitably online. Over the past two and a half years, Amazon.in has introduced the most comprehensive suite of offerings for sellers to sell online in India. From running an extensive education and skilling program for SMBs called Seller University, offering Fulfilment By Amazon (a pay-as-you-go fulfilment service wherein Amazon.in packs, ships and delivers products to customers, manages returns and does customer service on behalf of the sellers), innovating Easy Ship (an assisted shipping service that makes it easy for sellers to ship products across India) and Seller Flex (bringing Amazon’s flagship FBA experience to the seller’s doorstep by implementing the FBA technology at sellers’ warehouses), to building the largest storage capacity in ecommerce in India for sellers to the tune of 5 million cubic feet, Amazon.in has been helping sellers reach millions of customers across the country.Amazon launched its Global Selling Program for sellers in India in May last year and today over 6000 sellers from India are selling their ‘Make in India’ products on Amazon’s nine global marketplaces to over 304 million active worldwide customers.
Amazon.in also recently launched a lending program for sellers through an independent, third party partner to offer secured & unsecured loans to sellers from 5 lakh rupees to INR 2 crores at very competitive interest rates.
