Amazon launches AWS Lift in India for digital transformation of SMBs

Amazon’s cloud arm AWS launched AWS Lift in India to help small and midsize businesses (SMBs) with their digital transformation. Focused on businesses with annual revenues of 80 to 625 crore, AWS Lift program will offer access to 200 fully-featured services on AWS. These companies will be able to leverage AWS services without any associated costs.

With a minimum billing fee of $1 and no lock-in periods, companies will be able to leverage the pay-as-you-go model to develop their operations and transform processes to drive new revenue growth. 

“Our SMB customers are already seeing business results by leveraging the cloud to enhance their productivity, increase customer acquisition, and expand into new markets. We look forward to empowering more customers to adopt the cloud with AWS Lift, in collaboration with our partner network, as India realizes the vision to become a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy,” said Puneet Chandok, president of commercial business, AWS India and South Asia.

Notably, Amazon announced in 2020 that it will support digitalisation of 10 million SMBs in India by 2025. Last year, AWS launched SMB Vidyalaya to support the digital upskilling of small businesses and introduced Amazon Digital Suite for offering software solutions.

According to IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Small and Medium-Sized Business and Digital-Native Business 2023 Predictions — India Implications, 30% of SMBs will shift half of their core workloads to the cloud by 2025 to drive business agility and future resilience.

“SMBs are the backbone of the Indian economy and are eager to adopt technology to achieve greater efficiency and flexibility. They are increasingly investing in technology solutions to become more cost-efficient, improve customer acquisition and retention, and balance growth with quality. By adopting a more digital way of doing business, SMBs in India have tremendous potential to expand - leading to an increase in their market share," said Supriya Deka, Senior market analyst for digital small and medium-sized business, IDC Asia/Pacific, in an IDC report.