NRN's Catamaran-Amazon JV to bring SMEs into digital economy
Updated: Jun 28, 2014 12:31:33pm
Bengaluru, Jun 28 (KNN) The joint venture between N R Narayana Murthy’s venture capital fund, Catamaran Ventures and global e-commerce giant Amazon will focus on training India’s SME retailers in online tools and achieve their inclusion in the fast growing digital economy.
The joint venture, named Taurus Business and Trade Services Private Limited said in a statement that the new entity which was formalised in May is operational.
“The entity is operational across major cities and towns in India to train SME sellers in online tools and help them gain a larger customer audience for their existing merchandise and develop other offerings that will increase revenues and footfalls for SME retailers in India. The partnership will focus, accelerate and scale the inclusion of SMEs into the digital economy...,” the company said in a statement.
The SMEs are fast occupying the priority space for major e-commerce players in India as the sector accounts for over 40 per cent of the country's manufacturing and 45 per cent of the exports employing over 80-90 million people, next only to agriculture.
The home-grown e-commerce player, Flipkart has recently signed a MoU with the Federation of Indian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (FISME) through which they will jointly train and equip MSMEs in clusters to be e-marketplace ready and then Flipkart will provide access to its e-market platform. FISME is a network of over 740 MSME associations spread all over the country.
In the first phase, 50,000 MSMEs will be targeted to be on board Flipkart, according to Secretary General of FISME, Anil Bhardwaj. Besides connecting to a new market segment, using e-market place, he said, brings several advantages to MSMEs namely, need for lesser working capital as payments are quick and entrepreneurs get market inputs of design, packaging and pricing.
The joint initiative is to focus not only the traditional clusters of manufacturing handicrafts, textiles and garments and gems and jewellery but would also expand to other MSME strong-holds such as sports goods, leather products and life style products. There are 400 industrial and 3000 artisans’ clusters in India.
According to Flipkart, marketplace model is best suited for an emerging economy like India with a huge population. The model has seen traction in the past three years and hence it wants to expand this platform to enable and encourage entrepreneurship in the country, hoping to reach millions of MSMEs.
Flipkart with its access to the largest consumer data base in the country aims to help FISME make optimal use of available data to guide entrepreneurs and artisans on areas such as quality, trends, pricing etc.
With marketing being cited as one of the biggest challenges that MSMEs face, the 40 million MSMEs employing over 85 million people in the country may find Flipkart’s marketplace a new tool to survive and grow. (KNN Bureau)
The joint venture, named Taurus Business and Trade Services Private Limited said in a statement that the new entity which was formalised in May is operational.
“The entity is operational across major cities and towns in India to train SME sellers in online tools and help them gain a larger customer audience for their existing merchandise and develop other offerings that will increase revenues and footfalls for SME retailers in India. The partnership will focus, accelerate and scale the inclusion of SMEs into the digital economy...,” the company said in a statement.
The SMEs are fast occupying the priority space for major e-commerce players in India as the sector accounts for over 40 per cent of the country's manufacturing and 45 per cent of the exports employing over 80-90 million people, next only to agriculture.
The home-grown e-commerce player, Flipkart has recently signed a MoU with the Federation of Indian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (FISME) through which they will jointly train and equip MSMEs in clusters to be e-marketplace ready and then Flipkart will provide access to its e-market platform. FISME is a network of over 740 MSME associations spread all over the country.
In the first phase, 50,000 MSMEs will be targeted to be on board Flipkart, according to Secretary General of FISME, Anil Bhardwaj. Besides connecting to a new market segment, using e-market place, he said, brings several advantages to MSMEs namely, need for lesser working capital as payments are quick and entrepreneurs get market inputs of design, packaging and pricing.
The joint initiative is to focus not only the traditional clusters of manufacturing handicrafts, textiles and garments and gems and jewellery but would also expand to other MSME strong-holds such as sports goods, leather products and life style products. There are 400 industrial and 3000 artisans’ clusters in India.
According to Flipkart, marketplace model is best suited for an emerging economy like India with a huge population. The model has seen traction in the past three years and hence it wants to expand this platform to enable and encourage entrepreneurship in the country, hoping to reach millions of MSMEs.
Flipkart with its access to the largest consumer data base in the country aims to help FISME make optimal use of available data to guide entrepreneurs and artisans on areas such as quality, trends, pricing etc.
With marketing being cited as one of the biggest challenges that MSMEs face, the 40 million MSMEs employing over 85 million people in the country may find Flipkart’s marketplace a new tool to survive and grow. (KNN Bureau)
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