Amazon just made a massive bet on India’s tech and e-commerce ecosystem, committing a $35 billion investment over the coming years, with a sharp focus on AI, small business digitization, and exports. The company revealed the plan at its Smbhav Summit in New Delhi, signaling a push to not just expand its retail footprint but also to become a bigger player in India’s AI and cloud infrastructure landscape.
This move builds on Amazon’s existing $40 billion-plus investment in India since 2010, which has already helped digitize more than 12 million small businesses, enabled around $20 billion in exports, and supported 2.8 million jobs across the country. And now with this fresh capital, Amazon is aiming to supercharge AI adoption for millions of sellers, increase export volumes fourfold, and create an additional 1 million jobs.
The new investment will be deployed along multiple strategic fronts. The firm plans to expand its digital infrastructure, including data centers, cloud services, and AI tools, along with physical infrastructure like fulfillment centers and logistics networks. By integrating AI into its platforms, the e-commerce giant hopes to make online commerce smarter and more accessible, using technologies like visual search, multilingual interfaces, and personalized recommendations. For small businesses, this means AI-powered tools to manage inventory, reach new customers, and scale operations more efficiently.
In parallel, the company plans to bring AI education and career exposure programs to roughly 4 million government school students, focusing on teacher training, practical experience, and AI literacy. Even exports are also set to be a central focus of Amazon’s India strategy. The company aims to quadruple the cumulative exports from Indian sellers, increasing the current $20 billion to around $80 billion by 2030. This would position India as a stronger hub for Made-in-India products reaching global customers.
The move comes amid a broader wave of foreign tech investments in India. Other tech giants like Microsoft, OpenAI and Google have also committed multi-billion-dollar plans toward AI, cloud infrastructure, and data centers in the country. The timing of Amazon’s latest announcement is particularly crucial given the challenges it faces in India. In March 2025, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) raided Amazon’s warehouses, seizing products ranging from appliances to electronics that lacked mandatory certification or carried counterfeit labels. This scrutiny came amid ongoing controversies over seller complaints, labour practices, and competition‑law investigations. In response, Amazon appears to be rethinking its strategy, with reports suggesting it is in early talks to spin off its India operations into a domestically listed entity to better navigate the country’s compliance requirements.
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