The homegrown e-commerce platform of Flipkart has offered a plethora of opportunities to MSMEs by helping throughout their journey to grow, being stable and profitable. Flipkart had launched its Samarth program in July 2019 to bring up the traditionally underserved communities like artisans, handicrafts, weavers etc to produce onto e-commerce. This program emphasises their commitment to lift new entrepreneurs and MSMEs by giving them ample support for account management, business insight, seller and warehousing support.
Small and medium businesses were hit the hardest from the COVID-19 crisis. The ICSB reports that the formal and informal MSMEs constitute over 90% of all firms the world over. On average these business accounts over 70% of total employment and 50% GDP as from the reports from the United Nations. Flipkart enabled 90% of its sellers to resume their business since April 2020.
Flipkart said the program Samarth since its launch has seen nearly four times quarter on quarter growth. Since the past five to six year’s other marketplace segments of the firm has grown to 1.5 to 2 times quarterly. Today, Samarth plays an important role in providing opportunities to the rural and underserved society of the country and supports over 6 lakhs artisans, weavers and micro-enterprises across India and promote more of such sellers to the platform.
Flipkart has introduced a set of new benefits for the sellers. The commission waiver of 0% is provided for any Samarth seller on-boarded to the platform for the first six months. Further, free cataloguing support for limited products, advertising credits to help them gain prominent visibility on the platform among others for the first month.
Jagjeet Harode, senior director and head of the marketplace at Flipkart said, with the government support and partnerships they have been able to bring artisans online from the remotest parts of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar and Gujarat. And will continue to reach out for more institutions and individuals further.
