Amazon Marketplace: Pakistani Sellers among World’s Top Three Fastest Growing
By Riaz Haq
CA
A year after joining Amazon Marketplace, Pakistan is currently ranked as the third biggest source of new sellers joining in 2022, according to Marketplace Pulse. Amazon e-commerce platform has global reach. As of March 2021, Amazon Marketplace operated and sold in 18 countries, mostly in advanced economies of Europe, Japan and North America as well as in emerging markets like Brazil, China, India, Arab Gulf states and Turkey.
Runway Pakistan
Amazon added Pakistan to the countries allowed to sell on its marketplace in May 2021 after a year-long talks between Amazon, Pakistan’s Ministry of Commerce, and the National e-Commerce Council. Prime Minister Imran Khan's Special Assistant Razzak Dawood personally led this effort to boost Pakistan's exports . Eventually, the new sellers from Pakistan will contribute significantly to the country's exports, particularly in cotton textiles and apparel categories.
Even before officially joining Amazon Marketplace, there was a cottage industry of gig workers that had sprung up in Pakistan to support merchants who had been unofficially selling products on Amazon Marketplace. These Pakistani merchants registered from countries such as the United Kingdom which are already on Amazon's approved list.
Pakistani gig workers include Amazon Virtual Assistants. These are freelancers providing services such as customer call centers, administrative tasks, fulfillment, and web development. Online freelance marketplace Fiverr lists over 7,000 Pakistanis who advertise themselves as Amazon Virtual Assistants, more than from any other country.
Here's Amazon Marketplace Pulse 's ranked list of seller countries in terms of new sellers who have joined Amazon Marketplace in the last 12 months:
Rank Seller Country
1 United States
2 China
3 Pakistan
4 United Kingdom
5 Turkey
6 Canada
7 Vietnam
8 India
9 Brazil
10 Japan
As for future growth, Marketplace Pulse Research projects a lot more sellers coming from Pakistan which is home to the world’s largest Amazon seller groups: “eCommerce by Enablers” with over 1.2 million members, “Extreme Commerce by Sunny Ali” has more than 1.1 million members, and “Ecommerce Success Pakistan” has nearly 200,000. The groups started years before Pakistani sellers were officially allowed to sell on Amazon.
(Riaz Haq is a Silicon Valley-based Pakistani-American analyst and writer. He blogs at www.riazhaq.com )
