Amazon says B2B orders up 108% during festive week from year-ago; 50% came from Tier-II, III cities

Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Amazon’s business-to-business (B2B) marketplace Amazon Business on Thursday said over 1 million MSME buyers ‘participated’ during the first seven days of the month-long Great Indian Festival (GIF) sale that began with Prime Early Access on October 16. While the figure for the number of buying customers wasn’t disclosed, Amazon said that it was the largest ever for any Amazon Business event with a 61 per cent jump vis-à-vis GIF 2019. Among other details shared by Amazon in a statement included 142 per cent rise in new MSME accounts with Amazon Business during the sale – up 68 per cent from the year-ago period. Also, at 108 per cent from last year, the number of orders placed during the sale was highest ever for Amazon Business leading to “a massive 291 per cent higher sales compared to 2019.”

“We look forward to help MSMEs address all their indirect spends and leverage Amazon Business to plan their short- and long-term purchases and improve their operational efficiency,” said Peter George, Director, Amazon Business. MSMEs overall placed over more than 3.55 lakh bulk orders – 26 per cent higher from last year leading to 147 per cent increase in sales from bulk orders.

Also read: IBM’s Ajay Mittal: MSMEs not far behind in tech adoption, it’s just that focus areas, scale are smaller

Importantly, Tier-II and III markets witnessed a 5x jump in sales and a 96 per cent increase in orders compared to 2019. Amazon said that over 50 per cent of orders came from Tier-II and III cities with laptops, smartphones, TVs, and consumer Electronics among the top sold categories. Amazon Business claimed over 16 crore GST-enabled products on its portal across categories with more than 3.7 lakh sellers.

Meanwhile, on the B2C side, the first sale week (October 15-21) of the festive offerings was dominated by the Flipkart Group with a 68 per cent share of the $4.1 billion GMV, according to RedSeer’s analysis. Amazon, on the other hand, had secured only 32 per cent share. Amazon and Flipkart Group cornered over 90 per cent of the first week’s GMV.