Amazon India on Wednesday said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the NIF Incubation and Entrepreneurship Council (NIFientreC) to accelerate grassroots innovation, local economy and improve livelihoods across rural India.
NIFientreC is a technology business incubator hosted by the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), an autonomous body of the Department of Science and Technology (DST).
The partnership aims to encourage innovation and create livelihood opportunities for lakhs of people across India, a statement said.
As part of this programme, NIFientreC - with Amazon's help - will bring together experts from various fields, particularly from the direct-to-customer (D2C) industry to hold masterclasses, workshops, and other interactive training programmes on all aspects of product distribution and its availability for the end-user in the most convenient ways, it added.
This partnership will help promote the creativity and innovation of students and budding entrepreneurs, specialising in consumer-based technology innovation at a grassroots level and accelerate the growth of a digital India, the statement said.
“With the fast-paced digital transformation that's happening in the country right now, there could not be a better time for grassroots entrepreneurs to consider taking their innovations directly to the consumers all over India.
“As e-commerce grows in India, we are proud to announce this partnership with Amazon to help boost the local economy by accelerating grassroots innovation and enabling the digitisation of several thousand innovators over a period of time," Gulshan Rai, Chairperson of NIFientreC, said.
He added that this is also an effort to display the country's prowess in technology innovation and accelerate the growth of a Digital India.
"At Amazon, we remain committed to our pledge of digitising 10 million MSMEs in India by 2025 and contribute to the vision of an 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat'.
“Our partnership with NIFientreC is aimed at bringing the benefits of digitisation and e-commerce to grassroots entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs taking forward the student innovations from rural areas to sell to millions of Amazon customers in India and across the globe,” Amazon India Vice President Manish Tiwary said.
He added that digitisation can help create sustainable livelihoods in rural India by expanding the reach of micro-entrepreneurs and thereby unlocking their full potential.
"With extensive capacity-building sessions and digitisation drives, we hope to make selling on Amazon easier for thousands of such innovators from across rural India and help boost the local economy,” he said.
