Amazon Launches Multi Channel Fulfillment, Bringing In Sellers Outside Its Fold
Amazon has launched Multi Channel Fulfillment (MCF), a business solution that enables sellers to leverage Amazon’s fulfillment network and team of experts to pick, pack, ship, and deliver customer orders from off-Amazon sales channels.
Now, sellers who are not on the e-commerce platform can also run their business online by accessing Amazon’s MCF. The product was launched at Amazon Smbhav, held at Delhi, reported the ET.
Senior Vice President, India and emerging markets, at Amazon, Amit Agarwal said, “very excited to announce this product called Multi Channel Fulfillment. And what that does is it allows small businesses, direct-to-consumer brands, to take advantage of our fulfillment infrastructure, and they don’t have to worry about where their inventory is, what their fulfilment looks like, irrespective of whether they are selling on Amazon or off Amazon,” he added, “ So, no matter where you are, you can run your operations using the Amazon fulfillment infrastructure.”
MCF would allow D2C sellers to benefit from Amazon’s logistics and supply capabilities to pick, pack and send products to customers through various sales channels – also from the seller’s websites, from their inventory in the Amazon fulfillment centres. Amazon had also given access to third party merchants and companies to benefit from their logistics and transportation network, last year.
On another development, Amazon has brought out an AI virtual assistant, Amazon Sahai. This AI driven Sahai would aid small business in conducting their online business operations. On this, Mr. Agarwal said, “in the spirit of future technologies…we are very excited to announce a generative AI solution for small businesses. It’s called Sahai—it’s a play on ‘help’ and ‘AI.’”
About the AI technology for Amazon, Senior Vice President, International Consumer, Russell Grandinetti said that in the next ten years, all the aspects of Amazon would be transformed in meaningful ways by AI.
Sahai’s role would be to clarify the questions of sellers, list the products, generate the attributes of the products, aid in analysing the trends in their products and so on.
Amazon, also announced the MoU with India post at the Smbhav platform. The MoU is on creating a seamless solution for cross border logistics that would allow the opportunities for global selling. Through this, local products could reach customers on a global scale. This is a first of its kind and is being launched on its tenth year of business in India. This has a background, as earlier in order to boost the government’s goal of $20billion in exports by 2025, Amazon had pledged that it would hit $8billion cumulative exports from India in the year 2023.
Along with Indian Posts, Amazon also has a partnership with Indian railways in leveraging its freight corridors to enable the shipments of products to reach customers at a faster and efficient manner.
On the company’s outlook for future, Mr. Grandinetti said, that he was very enthusiastic about the next ten years, and “I think we’re just getting started.” He also added that Amazon would become a part of India’s transformation as India would take in as the world’s third largest economy.
