Amazon has just announced a 250 million US Dollars fund that will be set up in India. This large fund will be targeting small to medium scale businesses to bring digitalization to these firms, and bringing innovation into areas like agri-tech and health tech in India.

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According to a TechRadar report, the fund was announced in the opening session of Amazon India’s flagship event Smbhav. During this event, Andy Jassy, AWS CEO and incoming CEO of Amzon, and Amit Agarwal, Global Senior VP and Country Head, Amazon India showcased the company’s long term commitment towards India’s Aatmanirbhar Bharat effort, an initiative from the local government to become more self reliant. Furthermore, the e-commerce giant also announced its plans to digitally empower and bring 1 million offline retailers and neighborhood stores online.

In other words, the company aims to bring these sellers to its online marketplace by 2025 through the ‘Local Shops on Amazon’ programme. Notably, the announcement from the company also arrives amid reports of the local government drafting policy that is against foreign e-commerce based firms. Similarly, the company’s CEO Jeff Bezos announced its plans on investing 1 billion US Dollars at the maiden edition of Amazon Smbhav event to digitally enable 10 million Micro, Small and Medium enterprises (MSMEs) back in January 2020.

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This would have created e-commerce exports worth 10 billion US Dollars and create about 1 million additional jobs in India by the year 2025. Amit Agarwal further added that “The launch of the Smbhav Venture Fund aims to attract best ideas and empower entrepreneurs in the country to partner in this vision. Additionally, our initiatives to on-board 1 million offline shops on Amazon.in and digitally empower the North East region will accelerate the progress towards a digital and self-reliant India.”

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