Amazon Confidential

Amazon Vision: Our vision is to be Earth's most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online. Amazon Mission: We seek to be Earths most customer-centric company for three primary customer sets: consumer customers, seller customers and developer customers. Profile of Students: We are looking for students who are passionate about e-commerce marketplace, entrepreneurial and excel in delivering results. The students should be willing to dive deep and go beyond available industry reports to deliver actionable recommendations. Amazon.in: Amazon launched in India earlier this year amidst a lot of excitement and expectations from the Indian consumers. Amazon.in has been launched as a Marketplace model in which 3rd party sellers/businesses use Amazon platform to sell online. To further enrich the customer experience, Amazon provides the sellers with the option of storing their stock at its Fulfillment Centers ( FBA or Fulfilled by Amazon) and a host of other super exciting features.

Seller On-boarding Process Overview: The on-boarding process kicks off after the seller has registered to list their products on amazon.in. During the course of on-boarding, the seller is given an overview of the platform and is trained on listing and maintaining their products on amazon.in. The Onboarding Specialist, from the onboarding team engages with the seller and hand holds till the entire integration is completed. Typically, the time taken to complete the integration is 8-10 hours for a seller. Here is how the process works 1. Upon registration, the Onboarding Specialist picks up the registered accounts and sends out welcome e-mails. 2. Onboarding Specialist then follows up with a call and discusses the best integration method based on the catalog size and complexity. (refer to Appendix 1 for different Integration methods and their complexities) 3. Onboarding Specialist then educates the seller on creating the product file based on our guidelines. Onboarding Specialist then seeks a sample product file from the seller. There may be many iteration of the sample file until the file is green for uploading to our system. Once the file is green, then the Onboarding Specialist seeks for the complete list of the sellers products in the same format.
This case and the numbers published in this case are not representative of any Amazon businesses within India or in any other region where Amazon has offices or operations.

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4. Once we have the complete product file, then the Onboarding Specialist does a data quality check of the product file and then educates the seller on uploading it to our system and fix the errors and warnings if any. 5. Once the products are uploaded, then the seller is trained on managing their products on Amazon.in. 6. Seller is trained on FBA shipment creation (FBA sellers only) for the already uploaded products that he needs to send to Amazon Fulfillment Center. It takes an average of 7 days for the shipment to reach Fulfillment Centre and only after that the seller can be launched on Amazon platform. 7. Sellers Bank Account details, Seller logo, Customer Service contacts and other necessary seller details are filled by the seller, guided by the Onboarding Specialist. 8. The overall account is reviewed by the Onboarding Specialist and is made launch-ready by making changes in the backend. Seller is then launched on Amazon and their products will now be searchable on Amazon.in Minimum Criteria for a seller to be launched on Amazon: FBA (Sellers using Amazon FC) 40 Products received at Amazon FC MFN, Merchant Fulfilled Network (Other Sellers) 500 Products Hybrid (MFN+FBA) either of the above 2 conditions

However, an Onboarding Specialists performance is evaluated on the basis of the amount of selection he launches a seller with and not just on the number of sellers he launches. The whole process takes 6-10 hours to complete. Below is the broad level break-up of the different action items: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Account Setup 2 hrs Feed Ingesting 2-4 hrs (refer to Appendix 1 to understand how it varies) Training on Order Management and Performance Management 1 hr Training on FBA shipment Creation (FBA only) 2 hrs Seller Knowledge test and Account Review 1 hr

This whole process is conducted by the Onboarding Specialist from the Amazon Bangalore office over phone and email. If deemed necessary (Standard Onboarding would fail), he travels to the seller site to assist him on the same (High Touch On-boarding). It takes him 1 full day for training + around 1 day for to and fro travel so one has to be judicious about using this option.

This case and the numbers published in this case are not representative of any Amazon businesses within India or in any other region where Amazon has offices or operations.

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Case: Amazon.in Scaling up onboarding to keep up with the opportunity in India The main opportunity for Amazon lies in getting a significant portion of the sellers in India on its platform. For that, it needs scalable, fast yet reliable On-boarding processes. The target is to make the whole process as automated and self-reliable as possible. But to design that, we need to keep in mind the complexities in terms of the different types of sellers. We need to do seller profiling on the basis of the following factors 1. Uniqueness of the Sellers selection (refer to Appendix 1 to understand how it affects seller catalog uploading process) 2. Location of sellers company - Metro/Non-metro (Traditionally, High touch On-boarding has been difficult in Non-metros) 3. Online/Offline seller (Depending on this, sellers computer skills vary) 4. Mandatory Product Attributes (Key Info) availability - (refer to Appendix 1 to understand how it affects seller catalog uploading process)

Challenge: 1. Segment sellers into different buckets based on above factors and come up with new initiatives that would fast-track the On-boarding process for these sellers. Keep in mind the challenges each segment of sellers face and show how your plans will solve them. Also mention which sellers should we prioritize and why? 2. You are an Onboarding Specialist based out of Bangalore. In a week you have 40 hours which you spend on onboarding sellers. You have 50 Sellers [Appendix 2] across 4 categories to be onboarded. Based on the initiatives in Q. 1, come up with an optimal onboarding plan for these sellers and the estimated timeline for the same.

This case and the numbers published in this case are not representative of any Amazon businesses within India or in any other region where Amazon has offices or operations.

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Appendix 1 - Different Integration Methods The following methods are available to upload new listings of sellers onto Amazon platform A. Listing Loader This method requires sellers to put in just the following 4 attributes: SKU number UPC/EAN code Price (sellers offer price) Quantity (stock available with seller)

How it works: This method matches the sellers product with an existing product in Amazons sourced catalog* through its UPC/EAN code and creates a new offer on it for seller. Approximate time taken to train a seller and implement this method is 2 hrs for 500 SKUs Shortcoming Not valid for Unique Products (which does not exist in Amazons sourced catalog) B. Feed Template This method requires sellers to put in all the Product attributes (list of attributes would vary across categories) for each SKU. Hence, this is applicable for all scenarios (i.e. existing/unique selection). How it works: System first checks Amazons Sourced catalog for existing products that it can match to. It checks through UPC/EAN code. If found, a new offer on it is created for the seller. If a match is not found, a new product along with the offer is created if UPC/EAN was provided Approximate time taken to train a seller and implement this method is 4 hrs for 500 SKUs Shortcoming - The constraint with this method is that a lot of the Indian sellers do not maintain all these data for their products. It is further discussed below Mandatory Product Attributes (Key Info) Availability Some sellers do not have the Key Info needed to create listings on Amazon. When faced with such situation, an Onboarding Specialist does 2 things a) Asks the seller to procure these data from his vendors low success rate b) Waits for some other seller to create the listings on amazon and then asks seller to match to those time taking but practical approach
*Amazons sourced catalog - Catalog built by the selection brought in by already launched sellers on amazon marketplace.

This case and the numbers published in this case are not representative of any Amazon businesses within India or in any other region where Amazon has offices or operations.

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Appendix 2 Sellers Information

Microsoft Excel Worksheet

This case and the numbers published in this case are not representative of any Amazon businesses within India or in any other region where Amazon has offices or operations.

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