To empower thousands of artisans and weavers, Micro Small and Medium Enterprise (MSMEs) and Farmers through e-commerce Amazon India have inked four memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the state government on Thursday.

The four MoUs signed include tie-ups with Himachal Pradesh State Handicrafts and Handloom Corporation Limited (HIMCRAFTS) and Himachal Pradesh State Handlooms and Handicrafts Development Cooperative Federation (HIMBUNKAR) to enable handlooms sellers and artisans to sell on Amazon.in., tie-up with department of Industries to conduct workshops to enable MSME exporters to export their products and reach out to millions of our customers across more than 90 countries through Amazon Global Selling Program.

The tie-up with Himachal Pradesh Department of Horticulture will enable the locals to support the development of inclusive and competitive agricultural value chains over the long-term.

As part of the MoU with HIMCRAFTS and HIMBUNKAR, Amazon India will educate, train and enable weavers and artisans to directly sell their products to Amazon customers across the country.

The partnerships will further help elevate popular handloom products from clusters such as Manali, Sainj, Ropa and Sera which have tremendous potential and demand in urban areas.

The unique product portfolio will include shawls, pullan, footwear, jewellery, handicraft woven on handlooms as well as woodcraft, leather, embroidery, carpets of Tibetan pattern artistically stitched rumals and shawls of chamba, decorative wooden pieces, grass shoes, Himachali caps, among others.

MoU with Department of Industries, Amazon India will help conduct trainings and on-boarding workshops at pre-identified product cluster locations of Baddi, Solan, and Shimla, in order to familiarize MSME exporters with creating a seller account and listing their products on Amazon.com.

Through this partnership, unique products exported by MSMEs of Himachal Pradesh will become easily available to millions of overseas loyal Amazon customers, thus strengthening and expanding their reach and helping take Made in India to global audiences.

The MoU signed by Amazon with the Department of Horticulture will empower Community Based Organizations such as Farmer Producer Organisations, cluster level federations and primary agriculture cooperative societies that will benefit through e-commerce.

Amazon India Country Manager Amit Agarwal said, “We see a catalyst role for us in three key areas jobs, MSME empowerment and Exports. Our four different MoUs signed with the government of Himachal Pradesh will help us play a significant role in addressing those areas and empower the local community of women entrepreneurs, artisans and weavers, MSMEs and SMBs. We are excited that our efforts are meaningfully impacting the Digital Bharat vision and contributing to the economic flywheel of India.”

Amazon.in has close to 2000 sellers in Himachal Pradesh out of which close to 100 sellers export over 37,000 ‘Made in India’ products across the world registering sales of over $33 million in 2019 through Amazon’s Global Selling Program.

Amazon is serving close to 10 per cent of Himachal Pradesh population and receives lakhs of orders per month from the state.