Ecommerce giant Amazon plans to double down on its investments in India, according to the Amazon India Chief, Amit Agarwal. The future investments will be used to focus on key areas such as its digital payments platform Amazon Pay and the Prime membership program.
Despite homegrown ecommerce firm Flipkart claiming the top position at this year’s month long festive season sale, Agarwal believes this was their biggest season ever. “If we look at last Diwali, more than 70% of the customers repeated (purchases) many times during the year. In fact, one out of every five of them became Prime members. And this year, the number of transacting customers from last year was more than two times,” he added.
Last week, the company claimed to have grabbed a 44% share of the total customers and shopping volume, which was higher than any of its competitors. However, Flipkart disputed Amazon’s claim and maintained that it had been the undisputed leader during the festival season.
Amazon founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos made a commitment to invest close to $ 5 billion in the lucrative Indian market. While the Seattle based firm has already invested more than $ 2 billion to scale up its Indian business, Amazon recently pumped Rs. 260 crores in its online payments platform Amazon Pay service.
Meanwhile, many Indian startups, in an attempt to level the playing field, have voiced concerns over the aggressive spending of global giants like Amazon and Uber in local markets. To this end, several founders of homegrown companies have launched the lobby group, Indiatech.org, to rally the government to create policies that serve the interest of smaller Indian companies.
Speaking about the lobby group headed by Flipkart founder Sachin Bansal, Amit Agarwal said, “I am as much as an Indian as anyone else out there and Amazon India is as much an Indian company as other startups. Other startups are as foreign in their investment profile as any other company. So I really don’t understand this. But our focus is very much on serving customers and we are committed to the long term.”
Speaking to a news daily, the Amazon India head also stated, “Capital coming (sic) in India, whether it’s VC capital or other companies bringing in that capital, is good for the country. It’s just building more infrastructure and solving so many more problems. So free flow of capital is good for the country.”
SoftBank, which is an aggressive investor in India, has fueled thousands of dollars into several Indian companies like Ola, Uber, Flipkart, OYO and Paytm. Recently, SoftBank along with other venture capital firms like Matrix Partners and Kalaari Capital also joined the lobby group to provide financial and strategic expertise to the member companies. However, SoftBank’s move to join the lobby group has raised concerns as the venture capital firm is in talks with San Francisco based cab hailing startup, Uber, for a major investment.
