Amazon's march into the Indian market is taking to the rails and the mail. Today, the e-commerce giant unveiled new deals with India Post and Indian Railways as part of its new initiatives that are set to enhance the delivery experience of small businesses. As it marked SMB event Amazon Smbhav in New Delhi yesterday, Amazon introduced new endeavours targeting the D2C brands as well as showcased a new generative AI "assistant" for SMBs — an Amazon "assistant".

The term is branded as "Amazon सह-AI," where the सह, by the way, means "co" or "with." The idea here, with the generative AI tool, is supposed to help usher business customers through the process of not only onboarding but, ultimately, using Amazon services. It's a kill of two birds with one stone: there are the tech-savvy SMB users who may feel dazzled by the bells and whistles of the AI interface, and then there is the whole army of users of an SMB who defines a "late adopter", and would presumably get a tool to help take away part of the headache of finding out how to use Amazon.

The AI-based personal assistant generative will utilize large language models. Here, the personal assistant will give product attributes based on images uploaded on the platform, and it will respond according to market trends, and it will assist new sellers by giving support through AI-generated responses with regard to registration, listing, and advertising.

"We have almost 12 lakh sellers with us at present. In some ways, we are using technology to provide them with a personal assistant," Manish Tiwary, country manager for India consumer business at Amazon India, said at an event recently.

The news is days after Amazon revealed that it would use the new AI tool to enable shoppers to know what their customers really want without having to read through hundreds of reviews. This is, however aimed initially towards a small proportion of US shoppers.

Amazon has developed most of its own vertically integrated delivery services around the world, but in India it relies mainly on third parties. The postal deal will be an extension of a current partnership and will deal with cross-border logistics and shipments for businesses to enable them to sell internationally. The rail deal will expand the domestic network of Amazon in India.

According to Amazon, Indian online sellers already sell to over 125,000 customers through Amazon's Global Selling program that caters to international exports for online sellers. Under its partnership with India Post recently entered into, these exporters are now allowed to submit shipments to more than a 100 mail export centres managed by India Post itself; these will then be transported and shipped overseas to a large number of customers of Indian online sellers.

We are happy to work with Amazon to lower the entry barrier for lakhs of Indian small businesses to leverage the e-commerce exports opportunity," said Vineet Pandey, secretary, Department of Posts, and chairperson, Postal Services Board, in a prepared statement.

While tying up with Indian Railways, the e-commerce major will use the country's direct freight corridors for its order deliveries. The e-commerce company said it already started operations along with Indian Railway's Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFC) on the 659-km long Rewari-Palanpur (Haryana-Gujarat) route and will add and make use of additional freight railway routes and capabilities of the Indian state body over time.

This is the first time Amazon pitches itself as a fulfillment partner to D2C brands that might not be selling on Amazon itself: that's something the company already provides in countries like the U.S., where FBA is a huge logistics provider. It is a sign of the size of D2C in India but also Amazon's own belief that it has the traction to target those businesses in the country.

"Even if you don't sell on Amazon.in, by paying certain fees, you're welcome to use our network, which is the warehousing network, the transportation network," Tiwary said while explaining the multichannel fulfillment offering.

Amazon will also introduce a rate card for D2C brands not selling on its e-commerce site but using its fulfillment centers under the new model. For that additional cost, the brands will get to avail of the services Amazon has in place thus far for sellers using FBA on the platform such as order management, tracking, tax invoicing and shipping. All of these would eventually help Amazon in gathering more seller data, that it may use for expanding its business further into the country by providing them more optimised solutions and bring the company in the fray among the Indian startups of the likes of Shiprocket and Xpressbees.

Despite the new moves to increase small businesses in its network, the Seattle-based company is struggling to grow its business in India, the world's most populous country and the second-largest internet market after China. The company has shut down its wholesale distribution, food delivery, and online learning businesses in the country in the past year. Several top-level Amazon executives have also moved to other companies in recent months.

In June, Amazon reported it would commit another $15 billion to India over the next ten years. Through last count, the company has committed about $11 billion of its own cash into the market so far. That investment includes some $12.7 billion specifically for its cloud business in the country, and less than $3 billion for Indian e-commerce.