E-commerce has become a big leveller in exports: Director, Global Trade, Amazon

E-commerce has become a big leveller in terms of allowing smaller players to participate in the export cycle, said Bhupen Wakankar, Director, Global Trade, Amazon in a Twitter Space organized by the Plunge Daily on Thursday. The session, moderated by Ashutosh Bhattacharya, was attended by leading thinkers and business experts including Lloyd Mathias, Angel Investor & Business Strategist and Sumathi Chakravarthy, CEO and Managing Director, Infinite Sum Modelling.

“What we are seeing in the last 2-3 years, especially since the pandemic, is a deep sense of rejuvenation in the export system with more participation of MSMEs and small-scale sellers. We serve 100+ countries, so our sellers can list themselves on our websites in the UK or Germany or wherever they want, and reach out to a worldwide buyer. In this way, E-commerce has become a big leveller in terms of allowing smaller players to participate in the export cycle, something which was difficult even around 5 years ago”, said Mr Wakankar in his opening remarks in the session. 

His team at Amazon focussed on creating technology that make it easy for Indian sellers and brands to export their products, with a goal of driving $20 billion in e-commerce exports by 2025. 

During the session, Lloyd Mathias stressed on how technology is helping small scale sellers expand their services all over the world. “Tech helps sellers in understanding the requirements of their buyers. Platforms like Amazon brings to them artificial intelligent solutions which help them understand the needs of the buyers. It not only helps them in exporting their products, but it helps through value-added services like easier export finance. In the end, it’s about leveraging the power of digital. Digital smoothes out everything in today’s time. The question is how do we make this knowledge available to everyone,” said Lloyd, who has held senior leadership roles in Fortune 500 companies across India & the Asia-Pacific.

Sumathi Chakravarthy, who has had over ten years of experience in management consulting, economic modeling, analytics and technology leadership, said technology should be seen as a friend to the small players, not a rival. “Tech somehow is always seen as a competitor to MSMEs and small-scale industries. But we are living in a time where it’s not the case. Through e-commerce platforms like Amazon, MSMEs are serving many of their domestic products to buyers around the world.”

Wakankar of the view that e-commerce provides tools to small players to help understand not just the domestic market, but also the export market. “Exports in India have traditionally been dominated by large enterprises. But now it is shifted to many small players who don’t mind moving small pieces of inventory in warehouses all over the world, understand the trends in the market through data provided by e-commerce websites and help it to scale their business,” said Wakankar.