JOIN USAmazon takes its FBA experience to Indian sellers
Backed by its solid eCommerce platform and technology product features, Amazon is redefining its India seller strategy by expanding the Seller Flex initiative to further pass on benefits to its end-customers.
In an interaction with Deccan Herald, Amazon India Seller Services Director Gopal Pillai said the company is looking at backward integration via the Seller Flex business model.
“We came to know that our Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) and Merchant Fulfillment initiatives have their limitations as certain sellers do not want to take their products to the Amazon warehouse. So we thought of taking the FBA experience to our sellers so that they can serve customers faster,” he said.
Amazon tested Seller Flex four months ago with two sellers, which helped the company to reduce its logistics cost. “With the overwhelming support of sellers for this product, Amazon has expanded the number to 15 in the last three months and would take it to 20 by the end of the year. Next year, we will double-down and triple-down on this initiative,” said Pillai.
When asked about the advantage of Seller Flex, he said when something is gone out of stock, the seller can replenish it easily because everything is on his premise.
“It is a win-win situation and complementary to FBA. Customers are getting increased variety and prompt delivery. Sellers are witnessing increased sales and they can replenish their products fast. And there is no need to commit anything and bear extra money for sending to the Amazon warehouse,” he said.
Sellers number 1,00,000
The Seller Service Director said the company has succeeded in providing Gold Standard FBA experience via Seller Flex. “We have built 21 Fulfillment Centres since our operations in India, and is able to extend the FBA experience to 20 more centres within six months via Seller Flex,” he said.
Pillai said when the company started Amazon Seller Services in India, it had only 100 sellers. “Now we have reached a mark of 1,00,000 sellers and have 40 million products on our platform. It has helped us to give wide selection, best-in-class convenience, and competitive pricing to our customers,” he said.
Amazon Seller Service received its order book from 2,100 cities during the current Diwali, compared with 900 cities last year.
Seller-Flex gives sellers the on-premise advantage
“We have started the Seller University through which we have created 5,000 videos in five languages. It helps sellers understand what to do when they get the first order, how to ship their orders, and what to do when their consignments are returned, etc. We plan to bring this programme to a few more regional languages also,” he said. To understand how Amazon will benefit sellers, the company created Chai Karts in 30 cities and served 50,000 teas for potential sellers.
On the educational side, the company has a Service Provider Network which enables sellers to focus on their core competence like manufacturing products, and Amazon will help other services like taking pictures and cataloging the product, etc. “We have 200 service providers, and 10,000 sellers have availed their service,” he said.
Amazon has trained eCommerce specialists, freelancers who can help sellers to avail this platform in a better way. “We have 18,000 certified specialists and they are helping our sellers,” he said.
When asked about assuring quality of products from sellers, he said. “If it gets impacted we take it very seriously. We are pro-actively engaged in finding symptoms if there are issues while getting feeds on it, whether on customer reviews or at seller ratings. We also look at the patterns on our escalation and customer service contacts. We have machine-learning mechanisms to find errors also,” he said.