Haq's Musings

Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ

Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts

Saturday, June 25, 2022

Amazon Marketplace: Pakistani Sellers Among World's Top 3 Fastest Growing

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 research. 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.

Pakistani Sells on Amazon Marketplace. Source: 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 already 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 to 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.

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Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

Banner Year For Pakistani Tech Startups

Pakistan to Be World's 7th Largest Consumer Market By 2030

Sehat Card: Universal Healthcare in Pakistan

Textile Boom in Pakistan

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Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel

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Thursday, January 28, 2021

Lina Khan: Pakistani-American Lawyer Fighting Big Tech Monopolies

Pakistani-American Lina Khan is seen as the front-runner for appointment to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as a commissioner in the Biden administration. She is a Columbia University Law professor who specializes in anti-trust law.

Lina's 2017 seminal paper entitled "Amazon's Anti-trust Paradox" broke new ground in the application of anti-trust law against powerful technology monopolies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter. Traditionally, the US anti-trust actions have been focused on keeping consumer prices low. This narrow focus has helped big technology companies companies like Amazon, with its low prices, or Google and Facebook with their “free” services, to avoid anti-trust scrutiny.

Lina was born in London in 1989 to Pakistani parents who migrated to the United States when she was 11. She graduated from Williams College with a BA degree and then studied law at Yale University. She is now an associate professor at Columbia Law School in New York City.

Anti-Trust Scholar Lina Khan

US tech companies are facing increasing scrutiny in Washington over their growing size and power. In October 2019, an investigation by the House Judiciary Committee issued a 449-page report. It accused the big technology companies of charging high fees, forcing smaller customers into unfavorable contracts and of using "killer acquisitions" to constrain competitors. "To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons," it said. The appointment of Lina Khan as FTC commissioner would send a clear signal to the US tech giants that the Biden administration means business.

Lina Khan acknowledges the popularity of the convenience and the free services offered by the large technology giants like Amazon, Facebook and Google but she worries about the longer-term implications of their anti-competitive behavior. “As consumers, as users, we love these tech companies,” she said. “But as citizens, as workers, and as entrepreneurs, we recognize that their power is troubling. We need a new framework, a new vocabulary for how to assess and address their dominance", she told the New York Times.