Amazon, the Seattle based ecommerce company, launched a special store called Amazon Saheli to empower women entrepreneurs in India. This new initiative aims at helping women entrepreneurs across the country sell their products on a global platform. Amazon Saheli will work in collaboration with organizations that encourage women entrepreneurship including Sewa (Self employed Women’s Association) and Impulse Social Enterprise. The products of these entrepreneurs will be made available on a dedicated storefront called the Saheli Store.
Amazon India’s Director and General Manager of Seller Services Gopal Pillai, speaking about the new initiative said, “As a part of our commitment to transform how India buys and sells (sic) by enabling small entrepreneurs to scale up, we’ve now focused on the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs here to gain visibility and access to resources.”
The ecommerce company timed this announcement to sync with the opening of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit on Tuesday. The summit aims to highlight the theme Women First, Prosperity for All, focusing on women entrepreneurs and women empowerment. Through this initiative, women entrepreneurs from across India would have a new platform to reach out to new customers in the country and abroad to sell their products. Saheli will also help these entrepreneurs gain logistics and fulfillment facilities and other benefits like referral fees, free imaging, cataloging during launch, account management, post launch support and differentiation of products through specialized storefronts.
Amazon will be conducting extensive training and skills development workshops to help women entrepreneurs understand the nuances related to online selling and to develop their skills and capabilities, free of cost. These training sessions will also comprise of workshops on the listing of products, packaging, shipping, account management and customer service. Amazon is also planning to subsequently expand this programme through the other programs Amazon India offers including Amazon Trained Ecommerce Specialists (ATES,) Service Provider Network (SPN,) I Have Space (IHS) and Udaan.