Amazon India Allies with Kudumbashree; Seeks to Train, Support and Empower Women Entrepreneurs of the Organization
Kudumbashree is a women empowerment programme that was executed by the State Poverty Eradication Mission of the Kerala government to eliminate poverty. Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by Amazon India and Kudumbashree on Wednesday as a partnership deal.
Kudumbashree is considered as one of the biggest women empowerment projects in the world and in India too. Kudumbashree consists of more than 1,000 community development societies; the community includes more than 4 million women and is spread across 14 districts of Kerala.
The Amazon India partnership will be helping women entrepreneurs to represent their products on their Amazon digital platform by offering a marketplace and will also train and support them. This will further allow for their products to reach to various customers across the country.
Through this partnership, Amazon India will display regional and unique products like home, fashion accessories and grocery. These products are made by women entrepreneur of the Kerala State.
So to showcase the products on their platform, Amazon India will widen the Saheli program. The Saheli program will provide the required support and encourage the women entrepreneurs of Kudumbashree. Amazon India will offer a slight benefit to women by allowing them to sell their unique products online with ‘no’ initial cost.
The Saheli Program will then train the women entrepreneurs by organizing sessions on the subjects like product listing, imaging and cataloging, inventory and account management, packaging and shipping and customer servicing.
The workshops are completely free and provide benefits like mentorship programs and seamless onboarding support to women.
Amazon India has already initiated the program by organizing a pilot workshop; they have even added products in grocery and personal care online list which are made by women workers under the account of Kudumbashree. Just within three weeks from the start of the workshop, they have managed to obtain orders from different states. The orders are mainly from West Bengal, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and so on.
Kudumbashree was first introduced by the State government in 1997; the main objective of the program was to eliminate poverty especially in urban and rural regions of Kerala via community development schemes, under the guidance of local self-government. At present, it is the largest women empowering project in India.
Director and Seller Experience of Amazon India, Pranav Bhasin informed that, the involvement of women entrepreneur over the Amazon.in platform has been increasing from the past few years, from the time when we introduced our dedicated project- Amazon Saheli.
Further Executive Director of Kudumbashree, S Harikishore said that Amazon India is helping artisans, women weavers and handicraft experts and this will eventually transform the socio-economic life of women in Kerala. The change will also take place in urban and rural areas of Kerala.
Amazon Saheli was started in November 2017 along with SEWA and Impulse Social Enterprise. As of now, Amazon Saheli includes a wide range of products that have been listed by women entrepreneurs.
The program will provide broad training and skill development workshops. The program is only for its associates so as to assist the women entrepreneurs to understand the nuances of selling online and enhance skills and techniques that are essential to expand their business on Amazon.in.
Amazon Saheli has collaborated with 17 associates and has reached across 100,000 women entrepreneurs in India. It consists of women entrepreneurs like domestic helpers, handicrafts, housewives, artisans and others. There are around thousands of products that have been added across 13 categories namely jewellery, apparel and groceries.
Amazon India Director, Pranav Bhasin also said that Amazon witness entrepreneurs of all varying size and businesses of various levels across India and these businesses are growing significantly. Undoubtedly, a big amount of Amazon sellers are women as of now, which are of varying age groups and economic backgrounds.
