Amazon to offer fulfilment infrastructure to sellers outside its platform

Amazon on Thursday announced the launch of a new product, Multichannel Fulfilment, which will enable sellers to run their online businesses by accessing its infrastructure, even if they are not on the e-commerce platform.

“Very excited to announce this product called Multichannel Fulfilment. And what that does is it allows small businesses, direct-to-consumer brands, to take advantage of our fulfilment infrastructure, and they don’t have to worry about where their inventory is, what their fulfilment looks like, irrespective of whether they are selling on Amazon or off Amazon,” said Amit Agarwal, senior vice president, emerging markets, at Amazon.

He was speaking at the Amazon Smbhav Summit in the national capital on Thursday. “So, no matter where you are, you can run your operations using the Amazon fulfilment infrastructure,” he added.

Amazon is also leveraging generative artificial intelligence (genAI) in its business, rolling out Sahai, a genAI-driven virtual assistant to help small businesses navigate their online operations.

“In the spirit of future technologies…we are very excited to announce a generative AI solution for small businesses. It’s called Sahai—it’s a play on ‘help’ and ‘AI,’” Agarwal said.

With the tagline ‘making sellers’ life easy’, Sahai will help sellers on Amazon clarify their queries, list products, generate product attributes, analyse trends in their sales, and so on.

Commenting on the role that genAI technology will play for Amazon going forward, Russell Grandinetti, senior vice president, international consumer, said, “In the next ten years, there won’t be any aspect of our business that won’t be transformed in some meaningful way by this.”

Into its tenth year in India, the tech giant also announced that it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with India Post to create a “first-of-its-kind, seamlessly integrated” cross-border logistics solution that will expand the opportunity of global selling for businesses. This will make more ‘real’ the vision of local products reaching customers in New York, Agarwal said.

This comes in the backdrop of Amazon pledging to hit $8 billion in cumulative exports from India in 2023, to bolster the Indian government’s goal of $20 billion in exports by 2025.

The company is also partnering with Indian Railways to make use of its freight corridors, which will enable sellers to sell to customers across India in a faster and more efficient way.

“I’m very enthusiastic about the next ten years, and I think we’re just getting started,” said Grandinetti, adding that Amazon will be part of India’s transformation as it becomes the world’s third-largest economy.