AmazonMarch in the Indian market is transmitted to the rails and mail. The e-commerce giant today announced new deals with India Post and Indian Railways to boost delivery for small businesses. Then Amazon Sambhav SME event in New Delhi on Thursday, Amazon also disclosed New efforts to target D2C brands, and a new AI “assistant” – designed to help small and medium businesses use Amazon.
Branded “Amazon सह-AI” (सह translates as “co” or “with”) The idea with the generative AI tool will be to help business customers through the onboarding process and then actually using Amazon services. Amazon has been thin on the details of how this will look, but it’s a way to kill two birds with one stone: SMB users who might consider themselves more tech-savvy will be impressed by the bells and whistles of the AI interface; But also many SMB users who identify as “late adopter” will theoretically get a tool to take away some of the headaches of trying to figure out how to use Amazon.
Amazon has built a lot of its own vertically integrated delivery services globally, but in India it mostly works with third parties. The postal deal, which expands on an existing partnership, will cover cross-border logistics and shipments for companies to help them sell internationally, while the rail deal will expand Amazon’s domestic network in India.
The direct-to-consumer effort is interesting because it’s the first time that Amazon is offering itself as an executing partner for D2C brands that might not sell on Amazon itself: something the company already offers in countries like the US (where FBA is a huge logistics provider). Its expansion here is a sign of the scale of D2C in India and also of Amazon’s belief that it has the ability to target those companies in the country. The ad was high-profile, with no details on what it would look like.
More to track…