Amazon taps into India’s highly networked rail and postal services

Amazon, on Thursday, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with India Post to simplify cross-border logistics for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) exporters in an effort to boost their share in India’s overall exports. Along with this, the e-commerce giant also announced its engagement with Indian Railways' Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFC).

The tie-up with India Post is expected to bolster the company’s engagement with exports from India, taking its from the present $8 billion to $20 billion by 2025, informed its senior vice president for India, Amit Agarwal.

Minister of State for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh unveiled a postal stamp to commemorate a decade of partnership between India Post and Amazon at the fourth edition of Amazon Smbhav Summit 2023.

Through this initiative, Indian exporters on Amazon’s Global Selling program will be able to book their shipments, print shipping labels and pay for shipping directly from their seller central account. They will be able to drop these shipments to 100+ Dak Niryat Kendras across India, from where the consignments will be exported to overseas customers.

“We are happy to work with Amazon to lower the entry barrier for lakhs of Indian small businesses to leverage the e-commerce exports opportunity,” said Vineet Pandey, Secretary, Department of Posts and Chairperson, Postal Services Board.

Amazon has become the first e-commerce company in the country to leverage DFC for shipping customer packages through freight railway routes in India. The company has already commenced operations with DFC on the Rewari-Palanpur route, covering a distance of 659 km between Haryana and Gujarat.

"We are focused on investing long-term in physical and digital infrastructure and building cutting edge technology solutions to serve customers and enable Indian businesses to scale and grow in India and globally, thus contributing to India's rising digital economy,” said Agarwal.

"The faster speeds, efficiency, and reliability of DFC will help Amazon India with efficient and timely movement of customer packages through freight railway routes across the country," said Jaya Verma Sinha, Member-Operations and Business Development, Railway Board, Indian Railways.

Jumping on the generative AI bandwagon, the company also launched Amazon Sah-AI – a generative AI-powered digital assistant Amazon that will help reduce sellers’ workload by simplifying time-consuming and complex steps such as registration, listing, and advertising support amongst others. With this, it aims to digitise 10 million MSMEs and create 2 million jobs in India by 2025.

Amazon completed 10 years in India in June this year. The company has recently announced an incremental investment of $15 billion in India by 2030, taking its total India investment across all businesses to $26 billion. Starting operations with 100 sellers and a selection of mainly books, Amazon India currently has more than 12 lakh sellers and has digitised over 40 lakh small businesses.