Convenience for All: Bindu Pirlamarla ’10 Leads Amazon’s Effort to Make Shopping More Accessible

People are shopping online more than ever, and Amazon is playing a big role in that trend. Bindu Pirlamarla ’10 is part of the team ensuring that, in this tough economic climate, customers of all status can access Amazon’s services.

Pirlamarla started at Amazon in 2012, after spending two years working in corporate finance at Unilever. Over the last several years, she’s held several positions at the company. Pirlamarla now leads the Product and Engineering team for Amazon Access, which helps to make shopping on Amazon easier and more affordable for customers, including those who depend on electronic benefit transfer (EBT) programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to pay for their food.

“Amazon Access is a one-stop shop for customers to leverage a number of services such as SNAP EBT acceptance on Amazon, Cash EBT, and also find a variety of discounts as well,” Pirlamarla said.

The USDA’s SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot launched in April 2019 and was originally slated as a two-year program. To meet the needs of customers during the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon worked closely with the USDA to rapidly expand access to online grocery shopping to Americans who rely on SNAP benefits nationwide.

“Before the Online Purchasing Pilot,” she said. “You had to physically go to a store, present your card, enter your PIN, so when you think about that kind of paradigm during Covid—everyone had stay-at-home orders, there’s folks living in areas without a grocery store who’d have to take public transportation, it wasn’t an option for them.”

Now, SNAP beneficiaries across the U.S. can order groceries online from Amazon.com, and from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market where available.

“It’s still new. People are not necessarily still aware that you can buy SNAP-eligible groceries online and then on Amazon, right?” Pirlamarla said. “So, I think there’s still a ton of opportunity to raise awareness and an opportunity to continue to make the experience simpler for customers.”

Throughout her career, Pirlamarla has developed a skillset which she says has been shaped by what she learned at Ursinus. She was a neuroscience and business and economics double major. Pirlamarla was also Class Secretary and president of the Students in Free Enterprise club, which is now known as Enactus.

“They really started to train you to think about the customer and long-term impact,” Pirlamarla said.

Those skills have proven to be critical to what she does every day at Amazon.

“I think particularly at Ursinus, being able to be a neuroscience major and a business and economics major, I feel like I have that ability to look at a problem from multiple angles and when I’m in a role like I am, I have to work cross-functionally and understand so many of the different considerations,” Pirlamarla said. “It helps me with taking a step back and asking clarifying questions before just diving into solutioning.”

As for her favorite part of her job, Pirlamarla says she enjoys the cross-functionality of her role and getting the chance to work backwards from the customer to improve convenience equity for those who need it most.

“You have so many different cohorts of customers so you have to really be thoughtful about how you’re building the project to make it relevant for them.”

You can read more about Pirlamarla’s work with Amazon Access and how it is helping customers here.