Mumbai, India (CU)_ E-commerce giant Amazon has extended its seller-centric vernacular and video-enabled programs to promote registration, onboarding, and marketing. The company has now introduced its account management services and merchant registrations in the Kannada language too. This involves handling orders, managing inventory and accessing performance metrics. The merchants can also access Seller Support Services and Seller University videos and tutorials in Kannada language. According to the company, the addition of new language would support over 35,000 Amazon sellers and lakhs of fresh sellers from Tier-I cities and outside markets such as Bengaluru, Mangaluru, Hubballi, Kalaburgi, and Mysuru.
The company said it had previously introduced services in Hindi and Tamil for sellers, which added over 50,000 new sellers register on the market. Pranav Bhasin, Director- MSME & Seller Experience, Amazon India said in a statement, “Language is a prominent barrier that Indian MSMEs face when they seek to leverage e-commerce to expand their business. As we move to enable more micro, small and medium enterprises to embrace e-commerce, we remain committed to strengthening our vernacular, voice and video powered initiatives”.
Amazon has also introduced Alexa that also understands correct nouns in different languages like Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, etc. Amazon added the south Indian languages Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu to its app to support the regional customers to shop online during the Great Indian Festival in September 2020. For its e-commerce customers, the company is planning to add Marathi and Bengali languages to its app, however, Flipkart already added Marathi earlier this month. This was done days after Navnirman Sena staff in Maharashtra allegedly vandalized Amazon’s storage warehouse in Pune for not including the Marathi language in the Amazon app.
Amazon is currently facing an investigation launched by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for alleged breach of the country’s foreign exchange laws and regulations. The investigation is being conducted following a correspondence received from the Ministry of Commerce looking for necessary action against e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Flipkart in relation to some multi-brand retail businesses and an observation made in relation to Amazon by the Delhi High Court. The court noted that the efforts by Amazon to regulate Future Retail through a combination of agreements it has with the Indian company’s unlisted unit would be regarded as a breach of the rules of FEMA and FDI.
