Bank of Baroda and Amazon India have tied up to help sellers on the latter’s platform to get adequate working capital. Amazon will provide unsecured short-term micro-loans at very low interest rates. The company has tied up with Bank of Baroda for the loans, which will be offered in a short span of 3 to 5 days. The loans can go up to Rs 25 lakh. Amazon India already has a Seller Lending program, launched in 2016 in partnership with YES Bank and Capital First for loan amounts of Rs 5 lakh to Rs 2 crore. The intention of the tie-up with Bank of Baroda is that all the sellers will be able to procure loans. Gopal Pillai, director, Seller Services, Amazon India, said working capital is the biggest challenge for all sellers. The company wants to help sellers remove all the barriers in this regard and create an ecosystem where they can focus on growing and expanding their business instead of having to worry about capital, he said. He said the loan disbursals are based on various algorithms, including the seller’s performance, account tenure, selling history, customer feedback and compliance, to ensure there are no defaults. The repayments will be done through a locked account provided by Bank of Baroda, thus helping the bank, too, to grow its customer accounts. P.S. Jayakumar, MD & CEO, Bank of Baroda said the bank understands the specific needs of SMEs for ecommerce business and is happy to partner with Amazon India to provide comprehensive banking solutions to their 2 lakh+ seller base. He added that the bank has designed the Baroda ECOM loan product (BEL) which moves the lending paradigm from Balance Sheet to Flow based.
