Global e-commerce behemoth Amazon, is expecting India to be its largest overseas market, taking over Japan, Russia and the UK. The Indian market is also expected to be the quickest to reach $10 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) in the company’s history.
Diego Piacentini, senior vice-president for international business at Amazon, said,
I can’t project the year but in the next few years India will be the second-biggest market for us (after the US) — there is no doubt. It was the fastest billion-dollar GMV for us and I believe it will even end up to be the fastest to get to $10 billion.
The biggest surprise is no doubt how fast our size in India has grown. I am an optimistic person but I never guessed that we will become this size in only just more than two years. I have never seen anything like this – not in the US, not in Europe, not in Japan and we are number one in the US, number one in Europe and number one in Japan… This is extraordinary.
The company has been pumping money for its India operations. In just a span of 10 months, the total sum of investment in Amazon Seller Services has come to around Rs. 3,000 crore.
Last year, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO, had announced to invest $2 billion in Amazon India so that the team can “think big, innovate, and raise the bar for customers in India.” About $460 million of those $2 billion has already been injected in Amazon India.
The Indian e-commerce market is growing at an immense pace and all the three top companies in the market – Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon are trying hard to capture larger market share and to be at the pole position. Amazon’s current business size in India is speculated at more than $2 billion in GMV, which is half of what Flipkart and Snapdeal are currently trading at.
Amazon started operations in India in the year of 2013 and is currently selling over 30 million products on its platform. To ensure that Amazon stays ahead of the game in India and to give tough competition to local players, the company has been regularly deploying funds to expand its network of warehouses and data centers.
