Amazon


AMZN

continues to make concerted efforts to bolster its footprint in the booming e-commerce market of India.

This is evident from its latest move of launching ‘Kisan Store’ or farmer Store on Amazon.in. Notably, the new store offers seeds, plant protection, nutrition, farm tools and accessories, and many other agricultural products from more than 8,000 small and medium businesses (SMBs).

Farmers can now shop items required for farming online on Amazon.in and get delivered those at their doorsteps. Also, Kisan Store offers payment options — cash on delivery, net banking, UPI, Amazon Pay, and debit and credit cards.

Shopping options on the new store are available in five languages namely Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam.

The company is providing additional shopping assistance via Amazon Easy stores. Farmers can visit these stores and take the help of store owners to create accounts on Amazon.in, select items on Kisan Store, place orders and checkout easily.

We note that the latest move of Amazon is in sync with the government of India’s aim of digitalizing the agriculture sector and uplifting farmers.

The move is likely to expand the company’s reach to farmers across India, which, in turn, will boost its customer base.

Deepening’s Focus on SMBs

The launch of Kisan Store bodes well for Amazon’s deepening focus on SMBs in India. It will allow businesses selling farming products to come online.

The company’s $1-billion investment announcement remains noteworthy. With the investment, it aims to build digital centers in 100 cities and villages of India. We believe that the proposed digital centers will help more than 10 million SMBs to come online.

The digital centers are brick-and-mortar resource centers, with the help of which the e-commerce giant encourages micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to adopt advanced technologies to go online by delivering knowledge, skills and support to the latter.

Recently, Amazon established its first MSME-focused digital center called ‘Digital Kendra’ in the country, which is located in Surat, Gujarat.

Apart from this, Amazon is firing on all cylinders in the e-commerce market of India on the back of its robust programs focused on uplifting the local shops, small offline stores, and SMBs.

It is witnessing the growing momentum of the ‘Local Shops on Amazon’ program in Maharashtra, India. The number of offline retailers and neighborhood stores from the state, which registered as sellers on the program, crossed the 11,000 mark.

With the program, the e-commerce giant strives to fortify businesses of small sellers by making them accessible online amid the pandemic, which caused severe disruptions to offline stores due to social-distancing and stay-at-home mandates.

Amazon has pledged to bring 1 million local offline retailers in the country online as part of the Local Shops on Amazon program by 2025.

To Conclude

The above-mentioned endeavors are expected to strengthen Amazon’s relationship with SMBs in India. This will continue to bolster the seller base on Amazon.in.

This, in turn, will expand product offerings on the company’s e-commerce platform, which will likely accelerate the shopping rate on the platform.

However, the company faces strong competition from the likes of

Facebook


FB

and

Walmart


WMT

, which are also deeply focused on the India retail space.

Facebook acquired a 9.99% stake in Reliance Industries’ Jio Platforms last year, which is a notable step. Its WhatsApp messaging service might also be integrated with JioMart.

Then again, Walmart is enjoying a sturdy foothold in the India e-commerce market on the back of the solid customer momentum of Flipkart, which is the strongest peer of Amazon.

Zacks Rank & Stock to Consider

Currently, Amazon carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

A better-ranked stock in the retail-wholesale sector is

Revolve Group, Inc.


RVLV

, which sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) at present. You can see


the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here


.

The long-term earnings growth rate for Revolve is pegged at 20.71%, currently.

Zacks’ Top Picks to Cash in on Artificial Intelligence

In 2021, this world-changing technology is projected to generate $327.5 billion in revenue. Now Shark Tank star and billionaire investor Mark Cuban says AI will create “the world’s first trillionaires.” Zacks’ urgent special report reveals 3 AI picks investors need to know about today.

See 3 Artificial Intelligence Stocks With Extreme Upside Potential>>

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.

Click to get this free report

To read this article on Zacks.com click here.

Zacks Investment Research