Vijay Rupani, Chief Minister of Gujarat Inaugurates the First Amazon Digital Kendra

AHMEDABAD:
Amazon India today announced the launch of its first Digital Kendra in India in Surat, Gujarat. Amazon Digital Kendras are brick and mortar resource centers that will provide micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) the opportunity to learn about benefits of eCommerce and avail a range of third party services such as shipping and logistics support, cataloging assistance, digital marketing services, GST and taxation support to kick start their journey towards being digital entrepreneurs.

Vijay Rupani, Chief Minister of Gujarat inaugurated the first Amazon Digital Kendra in a virtual event along with Amit Agarwal, Senior VP and Country Head, Amazon India and Manish Tiwary, VP, Amazon India. The first Amazon Digital Kendra has come up in one of the most important MSME clusters in Surat and will cater to thousands of MSMEs located in and around Surat.

Inaugurating the Amazon Digital Kendra, Vijay Rupani, Chief Minister of Gujarat said, “I would like to congratulate Amazon India for having taken this initiative that will help equip MSMEs with the right knowledge, skills and support to benefit from technology adoption and ecommerce. This is even more important as MSMEs look at reviving and rebuilding their businesses from 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. We need to empower and enable MSMEs to play an even stronger role in the Indian economy going forward. I am also happy that the first Amazon Digital Kendra has come up here in Surat, which is home to thousands of MSMEs and traders. I am sure they will be benefitted by becoming digital entrepreneurs.”

Speaking at the launch, Amit Agarwal said “Last year at Smbhav, we had announced that Amazon will invest $1 billion in India to help digitize 10 million Indian MSMEs by 2025. And today, we take one more important step towards that goal as we open our first Amazon Digital Kendra in Surat, Gujarat. 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. Amazon Digital Kendra will help MSMEs grow their business with adoption of technology and play an even more important role in the revival and growth of the Indian economy.”

Amazon will engage with local partners to set up and manage the Digital Kendras. It will provide local partners additional revenue streams while playing an integral role in creating greater awareness and understanding of e-commerce, understanding the exports markets, and offer MSMEs the tools to grow their business. MSMEs can visit the Amazon Digital Kendra and avail third party services including training on benefits of ecommerce, GST and taxation support, shipping and logistics support, cataloging assistance, digital marketing services amongst others. It will also provide opportunity for MSMEs to avail onboarding services if they are interested in registering as sellers on Amazon.in or engaging with other Amazon programs such as Amazon Global Selling, Amazon Pay, Amazon Karigar, Amazon Saheli ‘I Have Space’, ‘Amazon Easy’ etc.

Last year at the inaugural Smbhav Summit, Amazon had announced three important commitments – to digitally enable 10 million MSMEs, enable ecommerce exports worth $10 billion and create 1 million additional jobs in India between 2020 and 2025. The company is on track to fulfil these commitments and has already digitized 2.5 million MSMEs, enabled cumulative exports worth $3 billion and helped create nearly 1 million jobs in India till date including 300,000 direct and indirect jobs since January 2020.