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Ecommerce giants Flipkart and Amazon are involved in a fierce battle to gain an upper hand in India’s online B2B market
Despite the B2B vertical of both companies recording losses, the etailers are fast expanding to onboard MSMEs on their platforms
In an interview with Inc42, Amazon Business’ Director talked about the B2B business, increasing digitisation, challenges due to pandemic, future growth plans, and more
Ecommerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart are not only battling it out in the consumer-facing online retail commerce space in India but also fast expanding in the B2B segment (wholesale online purchases by businesses). Flipkart strengthened its presence in the space with the acquisition of Walmart’s B2B business in India in 2020 and is targeting an omnichannel approach, thanks to the Best Price stores earlier owned by Walmart. On the other hand, Amazon, which forayed into the space earlier, is focusing on propositions like GST-enabled products, helping MSMEs in saving money, among others. We are India’s largest GST store and in the last five years, we have added a host of features through which businesses can avail GST invoice with ease and sophisticated business analytics tools through which they can calculate extra savings with a GST invoice every time they make a business purchase.In March 2020, when the pandemic hit and offline movement of goods and services came to halt, we continued to support MSMEs in such challenging times and catered to the increased demands of business supplies and supported them to get back on their feet. During the initial months of Covid-19, we saw a 46% spike in average monthly order volume and a 45% jump in average monthly registrations.Suchit Subhas: We are always encouraged at Amazon to be customer focused and never competitor focused. We do observe competition, but our strategy is consumer focused. We rigorously follow a customer backwards approach and innovate on behalf of our customers, with a deeper understanding of the evolving space.
With increasing internet penetration and digitisation, the likes of Amazon, Flipkart and Udaan are expanding aggressively in the online B2B sales space, catering to millions of Indian micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
