Amazon, which began exporting from India seven years ago, would have to more than double its exports by 2025 to meet its ambitious $20 billion target
E-commerce major Amazon announced on Wednesday that it had surpassed $8 billion in cumulative exports from India in 2023 and is on track to achieve its target of $20 billion in exports by 2025. The company had achieved $5 billion worth of exports in 2022.
“We are really encouraged by the growth we have seen. We had crossed $5 billion in exports by mid-2022 and achieved $8 billion by the end of 2023. We believe we are just getting started. The momentum is there,” said Bhupen Wakankar, Director of Global Trade at Amazon India.
Amazon, which began exporting from India seven years ago, would have to more than double its exports by 2025 to meet its ambitious $20 billion target.
This announcement comes shortly after American retail major Walmart said that it had surpassed $30 billion in cumulative sourcing from India over the span of more than two decades. Walmart is now targeting $10 billion in annual sourcing by 2027.
Discussing the competition, Wakankar stated, “We are customer-obsessed and not competition-obsessed. More players coming in will benefit the seller ecosystem. We are all in this together.”
In line with its vision to boost domestic exports, Amazon has announced the winners of the third edition of its Propel accelerator program, namely Mirana Toys, Avimee Herbal, and Perfora.
Typically a 16-week program, the Propel program has now been extended to a year. This year’s edition shortlisted 47 brands from across the country, up from 15 the previous year. The program offers $100,000 worth of equity grants, AWS credits worth $1 billion, and extensive mentorship from industry veterans and Amazon experts, spread across the winners.
Amazon’s highest-growing export categories include toys, home and kitchen products, beauty products, furniture, and luggage. Other products like leather goods and Ayurveda products are also gaining traction, Wakankar added.
The US remains Amazon’s biggest market for Indian exports, besides markets like the UK, Canada, Japan, and Germany, among others.
The company’s flagship sale events in 2023 proved fruitful for exports from the country.
“Our sellers out of India participated in three large sale events: Prime Day in July, Prime Fall Day in October, and the Black Friday sale in November. Depending on the categories, we had anywhere between 40-70 per cent growth. Some categories witnessed 100 per cent year-on-year growth,” Wakankar noted.
Over the last year, Amazon has announced several partnerships with central and state governments to boost exports, an area where it plans to double down.
In November last year, Amazon signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, to co-create capacity-building sessions, training, and workshops for MSMEs across 75 districts identified by the DGFT.
At the fourth edition of its flagship Smbhav Summit last August, the company signed an MoU with India Post for an integrated cross-border logistics solution to boost Indian exports. It was also among the first e-commerce companies to leverage the Railways’ Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) for faster delivery of products.
“In cross-border logistics, from India, we now have a full container and a partial container ocean offering. We have an air offering with multiple carriers now. So, we continue to build that side as well,” Wakankar said.
According to Wakankar, the company is focusing on improving its technology stack.
“Market intelligence is an area that we continue to invest in a very big way, especially when it comes to areas like machine learning and generative AI,” he said.
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