Amazon Plots $2B Indian Expansion (July 31, 2014)
Amazon is seeking to expand its operations in India, and the e-retail giant is putting $2 billion toward that goal. The company entered the country just over a year ago with the launch of an Indian Web marketplace, which since has grown to offer 17 million products from thousands of small and medium-sized merchants. Amazon is limited by Indian law to selling products through third-party merchants.
In an announcement this week, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the Indian site’s success “has far surpassed our expectations.” Bezos noted that, at current scale and growth rate, India is projected to be Amazon’s fastest-ever country to reach $1 billion in gross sales.
Amazon’s investment comes just a week after local Indian online retailer Flipkart—one of its major competitors in the market—raised $1 billion of its own. But there appears to be no shortage of demand for online shopping in India, where e-commerce sales are growing more than 50 percent a year and are projected to reach $8.3 billion by 2016, according to Crisil Research.
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