MSME Buyers on Amazon Business Show Overwhelming Response to Great Indian Festival

Amazon Business announced today that it has seen the biggest ever participation from MSME buyers during the Great Indian festival (GIF). This comes as a part of Amazon’s vision to enable MSMEs across the country by providing them access to a wide selection of commercial products, great savings on purchases for everyday and long-term business use and help improve their overall efficiency.

GIF began on midnight of October 16 with Prime Early Access and opened up for all customers on October 17.  Over the first 7 days, GIF has become the biggest ever event for MSMEs on Amazon Business seeing participation from over 1MM MSME buyers.

“With participation from over 1MM MSME buyers in the first 7 days;2.4X increase in new MSMEs creating an account on Amazon Business; over 50% orders coming from tier II & III towns, we are greatly humbled by the response and trust that Amazon Business customers have shown during these difficult times. We look forward to help MSMEs address all their indirect spends and leverage Amazon Business to plan their short- and long-term purchases and improve their operational efficiently,” said, Peter George, Director, Amazon Business

Arpita Mukherjee, Procurement Manager at Polo Towers Hotel, Agartala said “Our group has been in the hospitality business for the last 30 years. Operating out of Agartala provides its own set of unique procurement related challenges. This has been made even more acute due to the pandemic situation. In this scenario Amazon Business has proven to be useful in helping us procure small and big items for our daily operations. We recently placed a large order for electric kettles during the Great Indian Festival on Amazon Business which helped us saving a great deal on that order. The overall experience was very seamless and the delivery happened in a hassle-free manner. We are looking forward to continuing our association with Amazon Business in the long term.”

Overall scale, reach and customer response

• In the first 7 days of the Great Indian Festival, Amazon Business saw a participation from over 1MM MSME buyers.
• The number of buying customers, largest ever for any Amazon Business event saw a 61% spike compared to Great Indian Festival 2019
• 142% increase in new MSMEs who created a business account with Amazon Business during the Great Indian Festival; This year saw an overwhelming participation from new customers an 68% increase over 2019 sale
• Highest number of orders placed during a 7-day period ever for Amazon Business, 108% higher order placed compared to last year. This has led to a massive 291% higher sales compared to 2019
• All this came on the back of over 100MM GST selection made available during the Great Indian Festival
• Customers in total placed over 355K bulk orders; 26% increase over 2019 resulting in a 147% jump in sale coming from just bulk orders over 2019.
• More than 40% sellers offered Business Exclusive deals compared to 2019
• Close to 150K sellers received a sale during the first 7 days an increase of 362% over 2019
• Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets saw 5x jump in sales and 96% increase in orders compared to 2019
• Among the Tier 1 markets, Delhi-NCR clocked the highest spike in sale a 2x jump compared to 2019
• Over 50% of orders came from Tier2, 3 markets
• Overwhelming response for commercial selection in Computers, Electronics and Large Appliances with Lenovo Thinkpad, Hikvision Camera emerging as the top selling commercial products.
• Customers bought over 15K products exclusively from the specially curated stores like Corporate Gifting, Work From Home, Back to Work stores designed to meet the various needs of business customers
• Top sold categories were Laptops, Smartphones, TVs and Consumer Electronics with leading brands being Apple MacBook Air, Redmi Note 9, iPhone 11 and One Plus Y series TV.
• New products received a rousing response; popular new products were OnePlus 8T, Samsung A7 Tab and Bose Sport Earbuds.
• Popular appliances were split ACs from Daikin, Whirlpool and Front load washing machines from Bosch and Samsung
• Top-selling products in computers and accessories are Apple MacBook Air, Lenovo ThinkPad E14 and HP 15 FHD Laptop.
• Popular in TVs this season were OnePlus Y Series 43”, LG Smart LED TV 32”

“We have seen an overwhelming response for our commercial laptop series on Amazon Business at the Great Indian Festival. We have diverse set of products ranging from affordable & reliable needs to premium needs of businesses. Amazon Business has proven to be the ideal platform for us to reach varied segments of SMBs for these diverse products. We are very encouraged by the overall response to our commercial selection. Amazon Business is one of our key channels and we will continue rolling out new products for SMBs”, said Ashish Sikka, Director – SMB, Lenovo India

Tanveer Khan, Marketing Director, Bic Cello India said “BIC Cello is India’s leading stationery company, selling over five million pens every day. With a diverse portfolio of stationery products including writing instruments, highlighters, and an exclusive B2B range, we see Amazon as a strong e-commerce partner connecting us with leading businesses in India. Online B2B retail is relatively new for us in India, however, the response has been highly encouraging so far. We believe that B2B will be a growth engine of e-commerce in 2021 and Amazon B2B will definitely play a strong role in paving the industry forward.”

"Due to pandemic, consumers – be it individuals or businesses, continue to look for contactless purchase options. The Great Indian Festival is the perfect platform which has been elevating the buying experience year after year. Godrej has witnessed more than 100% growth during this event in the past and we are sure that this year will not be different. We have been associated with Amazon Business for the last 3 years, and have received great response, especially for our preferred launches. The most recent launch of Godrej Vorspiel, a UVC Technology-based disinfecting device which can neutralize COVID 19 & other viruses and bacteria in 2 to 6 minutes has been well received. Our constant endeavour is to bring more of such business-relevant solutions, and we will continue to do so in the future" said Mr. Sanjeev Jain, National Sales Head, Godrej Appliances

Mehul Arora of Elcom Trading Company Pvt Ltd, which is a seller on Amazon Business said “We have been associated with Amazon since June this year and have seen significant improvement in sales since then. This Diwali on Day 0 we saw out highest ever 1-day sale with total orders grossing INR 1.03 Cr which is almost 8 times what we do on a normal day. We placed bets on Business and commercial laptops and ran Deals and provided business exclusive prices on our top 20 ASINs. We hope to see the similar exponential growth in the future on Amazon.”

This festive season, Amazon Business aims to empower MSMEs as a one-stop destination with over 16 Cr GST enabled products across top categories to cater to their distinct business needs. There are over 3.7 lakh sellers selling to business customers on Amazon Business. In addition to a wide selection of products, Amazon Business also helps MSMEs run their business more efficiently by helping them tackle their indirect spends which brings down costs and improves the ease of doing business with features such as Multi-user accounts and Approvals, spend analytics and safe and reliable delivery thanks Amazon’s trusted and world-class fulfilment network.