Amazon leaves its Indian competitors Flipkart and Snapdeal way behind in the race to reach the top spot with the recent investment of $3 billion in the country.
Summing up the earlier investment of $2 billion that the company had made two years back, the total money raised makes Amazon India stand at $5 billion dollars as compared to Flipkart’s $3.2 billion and Snapdeal’s $1.5 billion.
The announcement was by Amazon Inc chief executive Jeff Bezos on Tuesday at an event in Washington attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
With Amazon losing to Alibaba in China, an investment in India was imminent to keep it under control. It seemed Amazon has learnt well from the Chinese market. As per reports, Amazon has already overtaken Snapdeal in terms of number of shipments and is moving close to leader Flipkart’s market share.
Bezos stressed that the investments would help start-ups in India and further accelerate the country’s role as a hub for innovation and digital entrepreneurship. “”I can assure you it’s only the beginning and as we say in Amazon, it’s only day one,” said Bezos.
“We have already created some 45,000 jobs in India and continue to see huge potential in the Indian economy. Our Amazon.in team is surpassing even our most ambitious planned milestones, and I’m pleased to announce today that we’ll invest an additional $3 billion on top of the $2 billion that we announced in 2014, bringing our total investment in India to over $5 billion,” he further added.
Amazon has notched up its gear since 2015 with the main India unit of Amazon Seller Services receiving received Rs 8,618 crore since beginning of 2015 and over Rs 9,600 crore since it was set up. In March Amazon also made its intention clear to keep pumping in more capital, as it filed to increase its authorised capital from Rs 8,500 crore to Rs 16,000 crore.
Bezos further said Amazon would open a Web Services Cloud Region in India this year and the country would soon become home to the firm’s largest software engineering and development center outside of the United States, located in Hyderabad.
Amazon had so far built 21 fulfilment centres with more than 5 million cubic feet of storage space. He said its link-up with India Post enabled it to reach all serviceable postal codes in the country.
