Abhijit Kamra, Director of Global Trade, Amazon: ‘Mission is to help transform buying & selling; look forward to engaging with ONDC’

$20 billion is a very large number. It will have to be all the categories adding up and then the new categories that entrepreneurs are experimenting with. On the geography side, what we do is that the moment a new marketplace opens, we open that for Indian exporters also so that they can benefit from it.

The seller community has evolved significantly over the last few years and now they understand the value of good customer experience. It is also linked to the brand identity. If you put a good product in the customers’ hands, they are going to reward you with good sales. The second thing is that there are very transparent mechanisms which encourage good behaviour. And one of the simplest examples of that is customer reviews. If you are doing bad quality product, the customer is going to give you a bad review so the next buyer knows not to buy from you.

That is a very transparent way to encourage natural selection, and encourage sellers to up their customer satisfaction game. We are seeing a lot of people respond to that because they now understand that this is a long-term game and they are building long-term brands. The sellers are responding constructively.

How much of a challenge will the Open Network for Digital Commerce prove to be?

Our mission is to help transform buying and selling in India and digitise local mom-and-pop stores, micro, small & medium enterprises, and small & medium enterprises. Any initiative which helps in digitising these stores across India, either by simplifying technology adoption or otherwise, is an important initiative. We look forward to engaging with the ONDC to see what role we can play in serving Indian customers.

What are the key product categories and cities that have seen growth since the Global Selling programme began?

We are on track this year to hit $5 billion cumulative exports from India. In 2020, when Jeff Bezos was here, we had taken a pledge of $10 billion by 2025 and are now doubling it to $20 billion in the same time frame.

So if you think about north India, we have Delhi which is doing well. But we also have Jaipur, Noida, Jodhpur where a lot of exporters are coming from. And the typical categories include pet products, toys, office products and accessories, and leather bags.

In southern India, again the usual Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad are there. But then there is also a lot of action from Coimbatore, Trichy, and Madurai. The products that are doing well here are home apparel, kitchen products and others. Home entertainment and sports products are also starting to do well.