Amazon India will work with Kerala's Kudumbashree poverty and women empowerment programme to provide women entrepreneurs a marketplace to showcase its products to Amazon customers.
Amazon India will support, train and empower women entrepreneurs associated with Kudumbashree as part of the tie-up, for which the two parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding here on Wednesday.
Kudumbashree is one of the largest women empowerment programmes in the world with more than 1,000 community development societies with four million women members across 14 districts in Kerala.
Amazon India will extend its Saheli programme to empower and encourage Kudumbashree entrepreneurs, provide them a slew of benefits to help them start selling online at zero initial cost.
The Saheli team will also train the women entrepreneurs and support them through seamless onboarding assistance, imaging and cataloging, product listing, subsidised referral fee, and free account management.
Amazon India will bring in the regional selection and unique products across categories like grocery, home and fashion accessories made by women entrepreneurs from the state.
It has already conducted a pilot workshop and added products in grocery and personal care made by women artisans under the Kudumbashree account.
Within the first three weeks of the pilot, these artisans have started receiving orders from various states such as Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Delhi, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh to name a few.
'DISRUPTIVE CHANGE'
Pranav Bhasin, Director, Seller Experience, Amazon India, said that Amazon sees entrepreneurs of all sizes and businesses of various scale from all over India growing.
It is no surprise that a large percentage of its sellers today are women across a diverse age group, economic backgrounds.
Participation of women entrepreneurs on the Amazon.in marketplace has been growing substantially over the past few years, especially since the inception of the Amazon Saheli programme.
"Through the partnership with Kudumbashree, we seek to further drive disruptive change and transform the lives of women entrepreneurs from Kerala,” he said.
S Harikishore, Executive Director, Kudumbashree, said that the women empowerment project launched by the Kerala Government in 1997, is considered the largest such in the country.
Kudumbashree aims to eradicate poverty in rural and urban areas of the state through community development schemes, under the leadership of local-self governments.
"We are delighted to associate with Amazon.in under the Saheli programme to widen the impact of work done by Kudumbashree," he said.
DIVERSE RANGE
By supporting women weavers and handicraft experts, this association will change the socio-economic life of women in Kerala, both in urban and rural areas of the state, Harikishore added.
Launched in November 2017, with SEWA and Impulse Social Enterprise, Amazon Saheli currently has a diverse range of products listed by women entrepreneurs.
The programme offers extensive training and skill development workshops for its partners to help women entrepreneurs understand the nuances of online selling and, develop skills and capabilities necessary to grow their business on Amazon.in.
The training workshops comprise of sessions on listing of products, imaging and cataloging, packaging and shipping, inventory and account management and customer servicing. The workshops are free of cost and offer exclusive benefits including assisted onboarding and mentorship programmes.
Amazon Saheli works with 17 partners with a reach of a lakh women entrepreneurs. It involves housewives, domestic helpers and artisans with thousands of products across 13 categories such as apparel, jewellery, and groceries.