Amazon India on Thursday announced a $250 million venture fund for small and medium businesses (SMBs) on the first day of its flagship event Smbhav. The Amazon Smbhav Fund will focus on helping digitise SMBs and drive technology innovations in the agriculture and healthcare sectors. Amazon’s incoming CEO Andy Jassy announced the new venture fund at the event and said, “Small and medium businesses are the engine and lifeblood of economies.” The fund will primarily invest in Indian startups working on automating and digitising business operations. Amazon said another priority area is helping agri-tech companies build farm-to-fork models and reduce food waste, and assist the healthcare sector in adopting AI solutions and reducing administrative load. As part of the Venture Fund, the e-commerce giant has announced an investment in M1xchange, an invoice discounting marketplace for MSMEs. Meanwhile, the company said it aims to onboard one million local sellers on its platform by 2025. Amazon is expanding its “Local Shops on Amazon” initiative launched in 2020 to meet this goal, even as local traders and retailers express anger at the company. Amazon currently has some 50,000 retailers onboarded on its platform from 450 cities. Lastly, Amazon announced the ‘Spotlight North East’ initiative that aims to connect 50,000 weavers, artisans and other tribal communities to buyers. The company wants to sell handicraft items, teas, spices and other indigenous products from the North East to the rest of India and the world. The company is partnering with the Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation…
