Flipkart’s Samarth programme that aims to support small businesses has seen a nearly four times quarter-on-quarter growth since its launch in July 2019. The firm’s other marketplace segments have been typically growing at 1.5 times to two times on a quarterly basis since the past five to six years. The programme currently supports over six lakh artisans, weavers and craftsmen across India and is working towards bringing more such sellers to the platform.
Samarth Program
Flipkart, India’s leading e-commerce marketplace launched the ‘Flipkart Samarth’ – a breakthrough initiative aimed at bringing India’s artisans, weavers, and handicrafts producers onto e-commerce. It has been designed to support the e-commerce journey for artisans from on-boarding until they reach familiarity with the process of selling online. The host of initiatives and benefits under it include dedicated support for onboarding, cataloguing, account management, business insights, dedicated seller support, reduced commission where eligible, and warehousing support.
It is helping traditionally underserved communities access a pan-India market and engage with over 150 million customers. The initiative will help Flipkart partner with the government and add impetus to various social empowerment schemes. Flipkart Samarth will leverage increasing internet penetration in rural India to boost entrepreneurship.
It will work closely with reputed NGOs and government bodies and livelihood missions to reach a large number of rural entrepreneurs, with a special focus on women-led enterprises, differently-abled entrepreneurs, artisans, and weavers, who often face obstacles such as lack of access to working capital, poor infrastructure, and inadequate training. Flipkart said it has also introduced a host of new benefits for the sellers which include a commission waiver of 0% for the first six months for any Flipkart Samarth seller on-boarded to the platform. Further, they will be granted free cataloguing support for a limited number of products, advertising credits for the first month to help them garner prominent visibility on the platform among others.
