E-commerce giant, Amazon announced the setting up of 16 ‘GST Cafés’ across 11 cities to help sellers understand the nuances of GST and transition seamlessly through the entire process. In line with Amazon’s continuous efforts to enable its sellers be GST-compliant, these cafés, which are operational from 26th June will be available for a duration of two weeks to train and empower sellers on the implications of the new GST tax.
These support centers are set up at various Amazon Service Provider and Amazon partner sites across the country will help sellers address their queries on GST compliance and stay relevant for the upcoming GST regime.
Under this program, sellers will be able to walk into the café and get training and guidance from trained resources and experts for navigating their accounts and getting their queries resolved. The ‘GST Cafés’ in Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore will specifically have an experienced Charted Accountant to assist sellers in updating their GSTIN on Seller Central and get GST related concerns resolved on the spot.
The cafés in other cities will be operated by qualified Amazon Service Provider or Account Managers who will help sellers with “how-to” queries around updating GST details in Seller Central, procedural formalities and other simpler queries. All unresolved queries at these cafes will be redirected to Amazon Tax team and will be addressed remotely through email mechanism to ensure sellers get satisfactory resolution.
By setting up GST Cafés, the e-commerce player aims to support sellers to ensure smooth compliance of all legal formalities that pertain to the upcoming GST implementation and help them integrate effortlessly.
Gopal Pillai, Director & GM, Seller Services, Amazon India, said, “With just a few days to go for the GST roll-out, an in-person assistance is of utmost importance to help sellers with last-minute issues and details. We thus came up with the idea of GST cafes across cities to educate sellers about the new tax and its implications. Through these cafés we aim to handhold and assist our sellers and prepare them better for the transition.
We look forward to supporting our sellers in every way possible through comprehensive training, technology solutions and collaboration with subject experts. All necessary Amazon systems & process changes are being implemented rapidly to ensure that sellers are GST compliant at launch.”