Amazon launches accelerator for startups to enhance e-commerce exports from India; offers $50k grant, mentoring

Months after Walmart’s Flipkart introduced its startup accelerator programme to assist the Startup India motion, Amazon has now adopted go well with. The Jeff Bezos firm in India has launched its early-stage accelerator programme Amazon World Promoting Propel (AGSP) to assist rising manufacturers and startups in shopper merchandise area promote in worldwide markets by way of Amazon’s World Promoting programme. The corporate has obtained its leaders from India and overseas, enterprise capital traders, and senior leaders from the federal government’s Startup India and Make investments India programmes to assist startups develop and mentor them on enhancing their e-commerce exports from India. The programme will even enable startups to pitch their companies to enterprise capital companies Sequoia Capital India and Hearth Ventures and an opportunity to safe $50,000 in an equity-free grant from Amazon.

“With Amazon World Promoting we are going to proceed to make Exports easy and accessible to companies of all sizes and fulfill our dedication of enabling $10 billion in e-commerce exports from India by 2025,” mentioned Amit Agarwal, World Senior Vice President and Nation Head Amazon India in a press release. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos throughout his three-day go to to India final yr had mentioned that the corporate will assist export $10 billion value of products made by Indian small and medium enterprises by 2025 and that it could make investments $1 billion to assist digitise these companies. Amazon has introduced round $7 billion funding in India to date.

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Eligible startups could be early-stage companies, which have raised post-seed to pre-Sequence A stage capital, if funded, and would need to export to different markets. Such startups could apply until February 7, 2021, and can evaluated “by an Amazon led panel on the idea of the enterprise concept, scalability and power of the marketing strategy/mannequin, enterprise metrics in launched markets, founding staff credentials amongst others,” it mentioned. The accelerator will host 10 shortlisted startups for the six-week programme and prime three winners of the programme will get the equity-free grant.

Amazon and Flipkart are a part of a rising tribe of corporates partaking with startups in India and globally to assist them. Reliance, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Amity, Intel, Oracle, Goal, Yes Bank, and many others. have engaged with startups in India in numerous methods corresponding to enterprise capital arms, household workplace, incubator/accelerator vertical, or funding on a standalone foundation. Flipkart had earlier this month introduced choosing eight startups for its 16-week accelerator programme introduced in August final yr and can provide equity-free grant of $25,000 to chose startups.