Amazon India & CII Sign MoU to Help MSMEs Adopt E-Commerce & Digitisation of Business

E-commerce giant Amazon India and the Confederation of Indian Industry on Thursday signed a Memorandum of understanding (MoU), following which they aim to bring benefits of digitisation of businesses to Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in ten states across India. "As part of the MoU, Amazon.in and CII will conduct trainings, workshops and host masterclasses to enable MSMEs to sell online. Amazon and CII will work together to create a special exports module to simplify exports with e-commerce for lakhs of MSMEs across India," Amazon.in said in a statement. Amazon India to Host 4th Edition of Small Business Day 2020 on December 12, to Support Startups to Sustain Their Business Growth.

Amazon also intends to work with the Ministry of MSMEs and enable MSMEs across the country to take their business online so as to ensure a wider customer base for them, not only in India but at a global level. As a part of this initiative, the CII and Amazon will publish regular reports on market analysis and conditions to help the MSMEs foresee any opportunity and be ready for threats. They will also publish insights for enterprises on promising categories, marketing, and branding of their products, logistics, MSME success stories and information on top performing products and services. IIT Kharagpur Develops Portable AI-Based Device to Enable Automatic Inspection of Goods in MSME Sector.

The Director General of CII, Chandrajit Banerjee, said that their initiative will help Indian MSMEs to reach customers at a global level. She added, "education about e-commerce and e-commerce exports will enable MSMEs to identify opportunities that help them access national and global customers.”  Adding, “We are excited about our partnership with Amazon that will help bring e-commerce closer to MSMEs and drive their digital transformation.”

Early this year, Amazon India had made three key announcements including digitising 10 Million MSMEs, enabling $10 Billion in e-commerce exports and creating 1 Million jobs, by 2025."As we continue to work closely with the government on this important agenda, our collaboration with CII will help bring more and more MSMEs online, help them be part of the growing digital economy and create newer business opportunities for them," said Amit Agarwal, Senior VP and Country Head, Amazon India.

Recently Nitin Gadkari the Union Minister for MSMEs had also talked about the importance of technology and digitisation of the sector. "In the next 5 years, technology and e-commerce will play a key role in enabling this growth and ensuring the success of millions of MSMEs in domestic as well as international markets. The combined efforts of government and the Industry will bring us closer to realizing the vision of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat," he had said.