Just months after Amazon announced Amazon Business, its B2B service, reached more than 1 million customers, the company has now launched the service in India.
Reports Wednesday (Sept. 27) said Amazon Business hopes to reach more small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in India. Amazon India noted the launch of Amazon Business in the country will target an array of SMBs, including technology firms, manufacturers, universities and service companies, by providing them with eProcurement capabilities.
“This is basically a marketplace to serve the needs of small and medium businesses,” said Manish Tiwary, vice president of Amazon India, in an interview with Live Mint. “The idea was quite simple. We get a lot of feedback from our 220,000-odd sellers who reach out to us and want to buy stuff from our B2C marketplace. As you’re aware, we keep quantity limits on our consumer marketplace. What we’ve gathered is that lots of small businesses struggle to meet their procurement needs in a seamless manner.”
According to the publication, Amazon Business’s launch in the Indian economy will link SMBs to more than 100 million products to procure.
“We will have business prices here that will be different from the prices we offer our customers on our B2C marketplace,” added Tiwary. “More importantly, we will give quantity discounts.”
Amazon India also said it is working with Indian-based banks and financial services companies to provide business credit cards to some of the SMBs procuring from its site.
Amazon Business announced in July that it is now servicing more than 1 million customers on its B2B eCommerce portal. The platform first launched in 2017, but in April it opened its doors to U.K. business customers.
Data from the Office for National Statistics says the global B2B eCommerce market was worth $120 billion in 2015 alone.