Amazon looks to tap 9.3 lakh kirana stores by 2025: Report

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In a move to make its last mile delivery faster and seamless in metros, small cities and villages, Amazon India will be roping in 9.3 lakh kirana stores by 2025 in, according to a report. This is part of its plan to go hyperlocal, and are raising the speed and last mile delivery by giving more options to buyers and sellers. Presently, the company has 75,000 kirana stores spread across 450 cities. Amid Covid-19, the company said that it has added around 3,00,000 sellers in the last 16 months (from 5,50,000 to 8,50,000). It has 85% customers in smaller cities at present as against 60% two years ago.

Harnessing technology

In order to break the technology barrier and expand into uncharted geographies, the e-commerce giant is adopting more vernacular languages, by expanding the Alexa-based voice buy options. As many as nine local languages have been added in the mobile app, which could be a game changer for enabling more customers, especially in small towns, who visits one of its 58,000-odd Amazon Easy stores.

Apart from its ever increasing product portfolio, the e-tail giant is enabling and educating sellers and buyers in smaller towns and cities, with an added focus on Small and Medium Businesses (SMB).

It has also placed an impetus on training its new sellers through online and offline training sessions, webinars and seller university programmes.

In July, this year, the company launched its first Digital Kendra, brick and mortar resource center in Surat, Gujarat to educate Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) on availing a range of third party services like shipping, logistics, cataloguing, digital marketing, GST and taxation support.