Amazon India Shares Inspiring Stories From Its India Experience To Mark Fifth Anniversary

Jun. 6, 2018

Amazon India recently completed its five-year-long journey in the country and CEO Jeff Bezos congratulated its customers and partners for making it a successful venture with anopen letter. With this, Amazon India has shared inspirational stories about how it has fulfilled the shopping and logistics needs of Indians.

These stories come from thedifferent walks of Indian retail sector, which Amazon has catered to, to build a strong channel of partner seller platforms. The stories also highlight the share of offline partners which assist in bring special deals to smaller cities.

The company showcased glimpses from the lives of Amazon IHS (I Have Space) Programme partners wholeverage spaces in their shops for warehousing Amazon packages. This enables the e-commerce platform to provide last-mile delivery to several Tier-II and III cities as well as even smaller towns.

These shops – such as local vegetable and grocery stores, mobile recharger and accessory stores, and similar businesses –serve as pick-up and drop off pointsfor nearby deliveries and give shop owners opportunities to earn extra income. Some of these IHS partners also utilize their knowledge of the locality and deliver packages within the 2-4km radius of their store.

Amazon Indiahas also created local centers calledUdaan(Hindi for flight) Points in Indian villages. These centers act astouchpoints for training local citizensabout online shopping and help them get going with their Amazon experiences. TheUdaancenters also skill people so that they can be employed for deliveries, informing citizens about Amazon, andassisting them with online shopping.

So far, Amazon has roped in 12,000 store owners across 3,000 different pin codes in 21 Indian states. Apart from generating employment,Udaanstores also help villagers move past their inhibitions related to online shopping.

Amazon also shares stories about self-made entrepreneurs for whom the shopping platform has been a boon and one such story is about an online store, Zizira, which sells fresh spices including the hottest chillies from Northeast India. The store buys the produce from local farmers, giving them a fair compensation for their hard work.

Another story highlights the journey of Haastika, a store whichsells traditional handicraft made by the rural artisansfrom Odisha to the rest of India through Amazon. These handicrafts include metal and stone sculptures, jute baskets, silver jewelry, vases made of terracotta, and Odisha’s famouspattachitraart which has oil painting on fabrics.

With the initiative, Amazon India has opened doors of opportunities for women who otherwise had to rely on unrewarding and social taboo professions like scavenging for and collecting plastics from the garbage for recycling.

Lastly, the company shared a story about how another of its innovations –Alexa– is helping the learning curve of curious students. It tells us about Amol Bhuyar, a schoolteacher from the small town of Warud in Maharashtra, who uses an Amazon Echo smart speaker to help students learn faster.

Inspired by the talking robot Sophia, Bhuyar disguised an Echo device under a mannequin to help students relate better to new technologies and help them visualize Alexa as a humanoid instead of just a voice. The smart assistant only understands English for now and interacting with the figurinemakes students more fluent in spoken English as well.

Along with this, Amazon has alsoannounced a cashback benefit of Rs. 250on all purchases of Rs. 1,000 and above to thank them. But the offer is only valid today, so make sure you make the best out of it.