Amazon wooing new sellers

In a move that will bring hordes of new sellers from around the country on board, Amazon India has launched a new service called ‘Service Provider Network’ (SPN) that will help sellers launch, manage and grow their business on the Amazon.in marketplace.

SPN is a scalable network of third party service providers empanelled by Amazon after careful selection and scrutiny. The network includes experts in digital imaging, cataloguing, transportation, order management and customer service. These experts will not only help launch new sellers on Amazon.in, but also help existing sellers grow their revenue and succeed on the platform.

“India has over 15 million retailers and majority of them are first time online sellers who need hand-holding to transition to online selling. They face many challenges due to gaps in basic capabilities like digital imaging of the products they want to sell, creating catalogues of products, data feed required to launch their business on Amazon, and for ongoing requirements like order management, catalogue expansion etc.

SPN helps to bridge key gaps in seller capabilities, reduces their time to launch on Amazon and helps them manage their day-to-day business as per Amazon guidelines” Amit Deshpande, Director – Seller Services, Amazon India, told BusinessLine .

Making it easy Rohit Bajaj, CEO of 99yrs, one of the service providers empanelled on SPN, said he helps retailers go online in seven days. “Retailers do not require to understand the complex rules and regulations of e-commerce marketplaces; we handle everything from photography, content development, product listing to mapping key words and order management, for first time online sellers. We work for 80-100 Amazon clients a month and the number keeps increasing every week” said Bajaj.

SPN was initiated as a pilot in May 2014 with 23 sellers and now has over 2,000 sellers using services from 21 third party service providers in 35 cities.

Sellers will have a range of service providers to choose from based on price, breadth of service, quality etc and can use one or more services as per their requirement and pay as they use. Sellers can access the list of Amazon-approved service providers on Amazon Seller Central.

“With SPN, buying customers will get access to a larger selection through local sellers and those who offer unique products. The buying experience improves with better quality of images and product catalogues,” added Deshpande. Seller Rushabh Shah, proprietor of Mumbai-based computer accessories firm Graham Solutions, expects to double sales volumes in Amazon.in over the next six months, thanks to SPN.

“Our brand Zeus had no catalogue and images. We found Onlinebecho in the Amazon SPN, who assisted us with both very quickly. Their pricing and delivery time frames are very impressive,” he said.

Asked how many sellers Amazon was looking to get onboard through SPN over the next 12 months, Deshpande said “Amazon worldwide has over two million active sellers. In India alone we could have millions of sellers.” Sources said, Amazon is targeting to have 1 lakh sellers by December 2015.

Raising targets Meanwhile, rivals Snapdeal and Flipkart, who are also actively wooing sellers from across the country, have already raised their seller targets. Snapdeal, which has 1 lakh sellers on its platform has upped its target to 10 lakh sellers over the next 12-18 months. And Flipkart which has 30,000 sellers aims to touch 1 lakh sellers by the end of 2015.

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