Over 11,000 offline retailers and neighbourhood stores from Maharashtra are now part of ‘Local Shops on Amazon’

26 August 2021: Parvin Shaikh, owner of Gorgeous Princess Beauty Centre started selling cosmetic products from a small shop in Chinchwad, Pune in 2016. Amidst the challenging times last year, she brought her business online with Local Shops on Amazon to reach a wider customer base and an opportunity to boost sales. Since then, she has witnessed a three times increase in sales and today, and she is able to cater to a much wider customer base, beyond her local neighbourhood, including localities like Kothrud, Baner Gaon and even areas in the outskirts of Pune like Manjri and Undri. On her experience with Amazon, Parvin says, “The consistent growth we witnessed through the program helped us expand our customer base and product offerings, foraying into new categories including Healthcare, and Apparel. We have now registered our brand ‘PinkMee’ with Amazon.in for selling Mother and Baby Care products.”

Today, Parvin is one of more than 11,000 offline retailers and neighbourhood stores from Maharashtra registered as sellers on the ‘Local Shops on Amazon’ program. The program brings the benefits of ecommerce to offline retailers and neighbourhood stores. It helps supplement the existing footfalls at their offline stores with a digital presence on Amazon.in and expands their reach. The program helps customers discover products from neighbourhood stores in their city (many they already trust and love!) from the convenience of their homes while helping local shops transform into digital stores. With this program, sellers can sell to customers beyond their immediate vicinity, using their existing delivery mechanisms or engaging with identified courier partners. They can also leverage other fulfilment programs from Amazon like Easy Ship and Seller Flex to further expand their business within their cities and other locations across India. The program has played a key role in helping local offline retailers and neighbourhood stores across India sustain their livelihoods and jumpstart their business amidst the unprecedented pandemic.

Offline retailers, and Neighbourhood stores embrace technology to become digital entrepreneurs.

Launched in 2020, Local Shops on Amazon today has more than 75,000 offline retailers and neighbourhood stores from over 450 cities, including metros and tier 2 and tier 3 cities. This includes 11,000 stores from Maharashtra that are spread across cities like Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Nashik, Aurangabad, Thane, Kolhapur, Satara and Sangli among others. These sellers offer customers in their cities a wide range of products including Fresh flowers, Home and Kitchen products, Furniture, Electronics, Books and Toys. Customers can log on to Amazon.in and shop from some of their favourite local stores in their cities, get deliveries the same/next day and benefit from value added services offered by these sellers

Vivek Somareddy, Director Fulfillment Channels at Amazon India said, “We are excited to see the rapid scale up of the Local Shops on Amazon program across the country including Maharashtra. In less than 18 months of launch, the program has over 11,000 local offline stores from the state who have registered as sellers and are benefiting from selling on Amazon.in. It brings to light how digital enablement can help lakhs of offline retailers, micro entrepreneurs and other small businesses across the state get online and contribute to a digital economy.” With the upcoming festive season, we remain committed to bring more and more local offline retailers on the program and help accelerate their business. With Local Shops on Amazon, we remain focused on enabling access to a larger customer base for sellers in their cities and beyond, while providing impetus to create strong brands.”

Amazon has recently announced its commitment to onboard 1 million offline retailers and neighbourhood stores by 2025 through the Local Shops on Amazon program. To help the discovery of the unique local selection offered by these sellers for customers, Amazon will launch a dedicated storefront on its marketplace which customers can access in regional languages and also encourage the participation of these local sellers in onsite sale events. To enable additional revenue streams for them, Amazon will also provide them opportunities to be part of programs like I Have Space for last-mile deliveries and Amazon Easy for assisted shopping.