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MSME

Amazon launches Its First ‘Digital Kendra’ To Help MSMEs Start Digital Journey!

Amazon launches its first ‘Digital Kendra’ to help MSMEs start digital Journey!
Amazon launches its first ‘Digital Kendra’ to help MSMEs start digital Journey!

Setting its first brick-and-mortar ‘Digital Kendra’ in Surat, Gujarat, Amazon India announced the launch of its first resource center in India.

Staying true to its mission to digitize 10 million Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs), Amazon ‘Digital Kendras’ will act as establishments and will provide opportunities to small business owners to learn about the benefits of e-commerce. It will also avail the third-party services like shipping and logistics support, cataloging assistance, digital marketing services, GST, and taxation support to kick start their journey towards being digital entrepreneurs.

Manish Tiwary, Vice President at Amazon India said, “This is an important step towards the commitment we have made to digitize MSMEs. Our thought process was that if Amazon can go down to these MSME clusters and handhold them through their journey of digitization, it will help small businesses take their first steps towards e-commerce. Our trained resource partners will take these MSMEs through all the services and various programs which Amazon provides.”

“Amazon believes that a sustainable way for MSMEs to get on their feet is to go digital. And having the comfort of a physical center will only help MSMEs get the right level of confidence,” added Tiwary.

Tiwary added that Amazon India has helped Indian MSMEs export $1 billion in shipments in the last 12 months, under its ‘Global Selling’ program. Of the 850,000 sellers on Amazon India, the e-commerce major has onboarded over 300,000 sellers since January 2020.

“Last year at Smbhav, we had announced that Amazon will invest $1 billion in India to help digitize 10 million Indian MSMEs by 2025. And today, we take one more important step towards that goal as we open our first Amazon ‘Digital Kendra’ in Surat, Gujarat. This is an earnest endeavor to bring the right tools, support, and services infrastructure closer to where MSMEs are based and help them benefit from e-commerce,” said Amit Agarwal, senior vice president, and country head, Amazon India.

Amazon India has more than 100,000 sellers in Gujarat, at present, Tiwary added.

Last year, during Amazon Inc founder Jeff Bezos’s visit to India, the company had announced three important commitments – to digitally enable 10 million MSMEs, enable eCommerce exports worth $10 billion and create 1 million additional jobs in India between 2020 and 2025.

Based on the feedback for its first ‘Digital Kendra’, Amazon India will look to open more such resource centers in the country.

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Technology

Bengaluru Tech Summit-2021 To Be Held In Hybrid Mode This November

Bengaluru Tech Summit-2021 To Be Held In Hybrid Mode This November
Bengaluru Tech Summit-2021 To Be Held In Hybrid Mode This November

Bengaluru Tech 2021 with the tagline ‘Driving the Next’- a three-day annual flagship event will be held in a hybrid format from November 17, 2021.

The event will be inaugurated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Not only that the U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris will be invited to participate in the event, said Deputy Chief Minister C.N. Ashwath Narayan, who holds the IT/ BT, Science and Technology portfolio, told reporters here on Monday after holding preparatory meeting with the officials and chairpersons of Vision groups.

He also said that in the view of the possible third wave of COVID 19 breaking out the event will be organized in a hybrid format with one part being virtual and the other physical. The last event was held virtually for the first time, and the event had received an overwhelming response and participation from delegates of 25 countries, he added.

The three-day event will have distinct theme and topic. ‘Thought Leadership Day’ will be held on the first day of the event, while ‘Technologies and Strategies Day’ and ‘Startups Day’ will be held on the second and the third day respectively.

Prior to the event, ‘Beyond Bengaluru’ will be held in Mysuru, Mangaluru, and Hubballi during September and October. The event received overwhelming response from experts and delegates from 25 countries all over the world when it was held in virtual mode for the first time in 2020 due to the Covid-induced restrictions,” Narayan said.

Dr. Narayan said that Union Ministers Nirmala Sitharaman, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Harsh Vardhan, and Nitin Gadkari, among others, will also be invited for the event.

“To actively involve academia, VTU and Higher Education Council will be roped in for all the events,” he added.

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MSME

Govt Announces The Inclusion Of Retail & Wholesale Trades Under MSMEs

Govt Announces The Inclusion Of Retail & Wholesale Trades Under MSMEs
Govt Announces The Inclusion Of Retail & Wholesale Trades Under MSMEs

Minister of MSME and Road Transport and Highways Shri Nitin Gadkari announced revised guidelines for MSMEs with the inclusion of Retail and Wholesale trades as MSMEs. With this announcement, the retail and wholesale traders will now also get the benefit of priority sector lending under RBI guidelines.

He also said that earlier both the retail and wholesale trade sector was left out of the ambit of MSMEs. But now the revised guidelines will benefit around 2.5 crore retail and wholesale traders, and will also allow them to register on the Udyam portal.

Commenting on the development, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) said, with this decision, traders will be able to avail requisite finances from banks and financial institutions under priority sector lending.

The traders can now avail the benefits of several other government schemes for MSMEs, he also added in his statement.

The move has an immediate impact on smaller retailers & wholesalers with businesses up to Rs 250 crore of turnovers in availing immediate-term finance as part of various schemes announced under Atmanirbhar Bharat.

The new guidelines received a warm welcome from the retail and trade associations stating that this will enable a large number of traders to get access to the crucial capital that has been impacted greatly due to the COVID 19 pandemic.

All the measures that were announced for the MSME sector in the past year will now also apply to the retail and wholesale traders as well. This landmark decision by the central government will have a structural impact on the sector and will provide better funding options for businesses that want to get structured.

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MSME

SIDBI Joins Hands With Global Alliance For Mass Entrepreneurship To Help MSMEs Revive

SIDBI Joins Hands With Global Alliance For Mass Entrepreneurship To Help MSMEs Revive
SIDBI Joins Hands With Global Alliance For Mass Entrepreneurship

The Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) and the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) have entered into an MoU to help the MSMEs overcome their challenges that were elevated during the pandemic, along with the longstanding capacity gaps in the sector.

The MoU covers vast themes that include expanding credit access, building competitive clusters, increasing formalization, and improving the legal framework for ease of doing business.

Both the organizations also committed that 25 percent of the beneficiaries from the partnership would be women entrepreneurs.

The partnership will also focus on areas that include scaling up Udyam Registration as a unique ID for an MSME to access schemes across the entire MSME universe, leveraging SIDBI`s financial schemes to further formalize enterprises, among others.

According to GAME Co-founder Mekin Maheshwari, “This long-standing experience combined with the force of GAME`s 80+diverse partner alliance should ease the access to credit and a range of new support services for MSMEs at large scale.”

“We hope the power of the Alliance can be leveraged for nation-building efforts such as formalizing MSMEs and substantially improving access to credit & non-financial services,” said SIDBI Chairman and Managing Director, Sivasubramanian Raman.

Categories
E-Commerce News

The Central Government Proposes Stricter E-commerce Norms To Tackle Unfair Trade Practices!

The Central Government Proposes Stricter E-commerce Norms To Tackle Unfair Trade Practices
Government Proposes Stricter E-commerce Norms To Tackle Unfair Trade Practices

Love flash sales on e-commerce platforms? Well, it will soon be history! The Central Government has decided to revise the Consumer Protection (E-commerce) Rules, 2020 in the country to prevent unfair trade practices in e-commerce.

The revised e-commerce regulation will come into effect from July 23, 2021, according to which no e-commerce platform will be allowed to display any promotion of misleading advertisements, whether in the course of business on its platform or otherwise.

The Government has taken this step after receiving several complaints from aggrieved consumers, traders, and associations against unfair trade practices and widespread cheating being observed in the e-commerce ecosystem.

The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution stated that the frequent occurrence of such unfortunate incidents has affected the consumer and business sentiment in the market. It has caused immense distress and anguish to many people. It was observed that there was an evident lack of regulatory oversight in e-commerce which required some urgent action.

The fast-growing e-commerce platforms have also brought the unfair trade practices of the market in which the various e-commerce entities are engaged under the radar. These platforms manipulate the search results to promote certain products, sellers, preferential treatment to some sellers, indirectly operating the sellers on their platform, selling goods that are close to expiration, influencing the free choice of consumers, etc.

Though conventional flash sales by third-party sellers are not banned on the platform, certain e-commerce entities are encouraging limited consumer choice by indulging in “back to back” or “flash” sales.

To prevent the exploitation of consumers, protect their interests, and encourage free and fair competition in the market, the Central Government is proposing a revised Consumer Protection (E-commerce) Rules, 2020 with certain amendments.

Many e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, and Myntra among others will have to appoint a Chief Compliance Officer, a Resident Grievance Officer, and a nodal contact person in India.

CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal termed the new draft as a “guiding stone to purify e-commerce landscape of the country which has been greatly vitiated by various e-commerce global companies to the extent that not only the domestic trade has been damaged but even the consumers are also feeling the heat of their unethical business practices”.

The proposed amendments aim to bring transparency in the e-commerce platforms and further strengthen the regulatory regime to curb the prevalent unfair trade practices.