US e-commerce giant Amazon has finally added Pakistan to its approved seller list. It was announced by Adviser to the Prime Minister on Commerce and Investment Abdul Razak Dawood.
“We have finally made it. We have been engaged with Amazon since last year and now it’s happening. It is a great opportunity for our youth, small and medium enterprises and women entrepreneurs,” he said.
Pakistan’s e-commerce industry has grown rapidly over the past few years but heavy reliance on cash has ensured gathering data and establishing benchmarks remains a challenge.
What does it mean?
Pakistan has finally bagged a position in the Amazon-approved selling countries and within the next 12-24 hours, Amazon’s official website will publish an updated list of countries.
Pakistan has remained off Amazon’s list of sellers despite the company’s presence in neighboring India. Pakistani retailers wishing to sell their products on the marketplace would register their companies from other countries, in an effort to bypass Pakistan.
However, after being added to the list, Pakistani merchants will be able to sell their products on the platform with ease. But this does not mean much for Pakistani consumers; it will mostly benefit Pakistan-based merchants that want to sell their products abroad.
Amazon can enable your business to build a large customer base. You will now be able to deliver to more than 100 countries in the world.
Amazon – a review
In the beginning, Amazon.com sold books. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, Amazon is now a titan of e-commerce, logistics, payments, hardware, data storage, and media. Its Web services business includes renting data storage and computing resources, “cloud computing,” over the Internet.
By the end of 2018, Amazon’s delivery infrastructure included more than 180 warehouses, 28 sorting centers, 59 local package delivery stations, and 65 hubs for its two-hour Prime Now (express) deliveries.
Amazon is considered to be one of the ‘Big Four’ of technology along with Google, Apple, and Facebook due to its market capitalization which crossed the trillion mark in September 2018, and also because of its disruptive innovation and hyper-competitive application process.
The company also owns a publishing arm, a film and Television studio, produces consumer electronics such as Kindle e-readers, and tablets, and is the world’s largest provider of cloud infrastructure services.
Pakistan’s e-commerce capacity
According to a report published by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Pakistan’s e-commerce market is estimated to have expanded to Rs. 234.6 billion in the financial year 2019-20, showing a growth of 55.5 percent on a year-on-year basis.
The transaction of the e-commerce comprises of Cash-on-Delivery (CoD), which stood at Rs. 140.7 billion, whereas payments through digital means stood at Rs. 93.8 billion.
With the largest population, Punjab has the highest contribution to e-commerce order shares at 55%, followed by Sindh at 36%. Balochistan, KPK and Azad Kashmir, cumulatively contribute the remaining 9%.
