The Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) and Amazon India signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to explore collaboration on several joint initiatives, aimed at empowering consumers to shop online with greater confidence.
The MoU signatories have agreed to collaborate to educate online consumers about their rights as well as raise awareness about safe shopping practices and protecting online shoppers from bad actors.
“Amazon is excited to work with IIPA through the Centre of Consumer Studies. Creating a safe shopping environment is crucial to winning and retaining customer trust in our marketplace. We firmly believe that collaborations with like-minded establishments, such as the IIPA, are critical to progress in this direction. We hope that this MoU will be an important milestone for not just Amazon, but for the entire ecommerce industry, to deliver a safe and trustworthy experience for online shoppers,” Chetan Krishnaswamy, Vice President, Public Policy at Amazon India said.
“IIPA is happy to partner with Amazon whose vast global experiences will complement our deep understanding of Indian consumers to aid development of new tailor-made solutions for a safe e-commerce space. Our collaboration will benefit from Amazon’s vast global experience as well as IIPA’s deep understanding of Indian consumers. We hope that our combined strengths will aid development of new tailor-made solutions to address concerns of Indian online shoppers,” S.N. Tripathi, Director General of IIPA, said.
As part of the MoU, IIPA and Amazon have agreed to explore several joint projects, including consumer awareness campaigns to educate online shoppers about their rights and empower them to prioritise their safety; industry dialogues with representation from diverse set of stakeholders to identify issues impacting online consumer safety and find actionable solutions to address them, several training programs for grassroot consumer groups with an overview of Amazon’s best practices and to create awareness for best practices for prevention of online scams and joint research focusing on consumer trust concerns.
Amazon leverages a combination of advanced machine learning capabilities and expert human investigators to protect its customers from bad actors across the globe, including here in India. In 2021 alone, Amazon invested more than $900 million and had more than 12,000 people—including machine learning scientists, software developers, and expert investigators—who are dedicated to protecting customers, brands, selling partners, and the marketplace from counterfeit, fraud, and other forms of abuse.
In addition, IIPA and Amazon will explore conducting several joint knowledge-sharing sessions and webinars for diverse stakeholders. The MoU will complement Amazon India’s recently announced consumer-education initiative, ‘Mission GraHAQ’, that is spreading awareness about safe online shopping behavior, consumer rights and more by engaging them on-ground via innovative street plays.
Headquartered in Delhi, IIPA is a leading academic center of thought and influence on public governance, policies and implementation. Honourable Vice President of India, Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar is the President of IIPA and Honourable Minister of State in charge of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension, Government of India Dr. Jitendra Singh is the Chairman of IIPA’s Executive Council. IIPA’s unit, Centre for Consumer Studies (CCS), is dedicated to protecting & promoting consumer rights through focused customer education/ awareness campaigns as well as via regular trainings to upskill government/ non-government executives involved in consumer protection.
