Just yesterday, Amazon reported that its quarterly earnings had managed to blast past Wall Street expectations. And now, Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of global e-commerce giant Amazon, had said that Amazon India is the most popular online marketplace in the country. His remarks during post-quarter results announcement signals at his intent to continue investment in the India operations to take the top spot.
The company’s performance in India was the hallmark of the Amazon CEO’s post-result comments. This is also the first time he has spoken about the marketplace after local rival Flipkart recently raised $1.4 billion from tech bigwigs — Microsoft, Tencent, and eBay.
Commenting about Amazon India, Jeff Bezos said:
We’re grateful that customers are responding — Amazon.in is the most visited and the fastest growing marketplace in India. It’s still Day 1 for ecommerce in India, and I assure you that we’ll keep investing in technology and infrastructure, while working hard to invent on behalf of our customers and small and medium businesses in India.
As per analysts, Flipkart is currently ahead of Amazon India based on the value of goods sold through its platform. Just last month, Amazon clocked average daily shipments of around 4.5 lakh items where as Flipkart’s average daily volumes stood at about 5 lakhs.
Also, the gross merchandise value (GMV) of the Bengaluru-headquartered Flipkart rose over $4 billion, while some estimates put the figure at $6 billion at the end of last month. However, in comparison, Amazon’s GMV in the last fiscal is likely to be over $3.2 billion.
Amazon is spending a lot of money in India to outrun Flipkart in the leadership race. While the company’s first-quarter earnings beat Wall Street expectations and shares surged to a record, its losses in international business increased about four times to $481 million in the quarter. This is primarily because of the expenses in India.
Earlier in 2014, when Flipkart announced its fresh $1 billion funding round, Jeff Bezos announced a huge $2 billion investment in Amazon India the very next day. However, this time, he has refrained from doing so, but pointing out Amazon India in the globally tracked post-earnings commentary hints at Bezos’ keenness towards continued investments even when the stakes have been raised.
So far, Amazon has already committed $5 billion in investments in the Indian market, to win the leadership race. In India’s fledgling market, along with Flipkart, it also faces competition from Alibaba-backed Paytm Mall.
Amazon’s global net sales rose 23% to $35.7 billion and net profit increased 41% to $724 million, marking the eighth straight quarter in which the company posted a net profit.
Citing data from third-party trackers, the company claims that Amazon.in was the most visited platform on both desktop and mobile devices. It also claimed that Amazon was India’s most downloaded shopping app.
