Amazon Business, the B2B arm of e-commerce giant Amazon, has seen a sharp jump in sellers as corporates and start-ups shift their procurement channels online taking advantage of the consolidation of orders and invoice reconciliation.

The platform is a marketplace for businesses to purchase goods and services online.

“We started off in 2017 with around 14,000 sellers and a limited selection and today we have managed to build Amazon Business as the largest aggregator of GST enabled selection in India with 19 crores plus products carried by 10 lakhs plus sellers,” said Suchit Subhas, director Amazon Business.

He said India's smaller cities are their biggest growth drivers as MSMEs join the internet bandwagon to expand the scale and reach of their business.

Reduced logistics cost and regional language support have been the key factors aiding the increased participation from MSME sellers.

This trend is backed by data research from Red Seer which estimates 70 per cent of the 85 million MSME sellers in the country are on the internet that is expected to rise to 80 per cent by 2027.

Around 60 per cent of the connected MSMEs use e-payment which is projected to increase to 70 per cent.

“We have seen an overwhelming response from tier 2 and tier 3 cities with 65 per cent of buying customers and 55 per cent orders coming from the smaller cities. Also tier 2 and 3 have 12 per cent more units per buying customer compared with Tier 1, which is encouraging."

"In terms of sellers, Amazon has digitised 2.5 million MSMEs across the country. We plan to sustain this momentum in the near future by catering to our existing and potential customers,” he said.

Among the popular spend segments, electronics and IT accessories topped the demand but non-electronics segments such as maintenance products and janitorial supplies are growing at a fast pace, data from Amazon Business showed.

“More and more business customers are moving from offline procurement to online for transparent pricing, easy access to quantity deals, better control on the spends and visibility," Subhas said