Amazon India has announced to expand its Seller Lending Programme which the company launched in 2016. Amazon has set up its Lender Central in India, a first in the world by the online retailer. This initiative will help the company’s sellers to seek money lending offerings on Amazon’s marketplace.
At present, Amazon has six listed lenders on its platform which has Capital First, Capital Float, Bank of Baroda, Aditya Birla Finance, Flexiloans, and Yes Bank. With the seller base going past three lakh, Lender Central will provide lenders with a mass audience.
Reportedly, Amazon India has said that they are looking for lenders who can offer small ticket size loans which are below Rs. 2 lakh. “We are looking for lenders who can offers loans between Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1 lakh; also we are in search of those lenders who can lower the interest rate on loans from 12-14 per cent to 10 per cent,” said Gopal Pillai, GM & Director, Amazon Seller Services.
Amazon India also claims to have reduced the time for loan disbursement to just one day, whereas earlier, it used to take seven days till the time the money used to reach a seller.
Furthermore, Pillai added that Amazon has a tried and tested algorithm that accurately predicts whether a seller will be able to repay the loan or not, which is calculated on the basis of an individual historical performance.
Markedly, Amazon was launched in India back in 2013 with just hundreds of sellers but the global e-retailer now claims to have more than 3,40,000 sellers who are retailing over 170 million products.
This move by Amazon India can help them compete with its biggest rival in the Indian e-market, the Flipkart, especially after the latter’s world-record deal with Walmart last month.
