Under Fire Amazon Will Export Goods Worth $10 Bn From India By 2025

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is on a tour of India these days, where he is meeting politicians, businesspersons and members of various organisations. Soon after his arrival in India, Bezos went to pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi, who used to advocate setting up handloom industries and urged for a boycott of foreign goods in India.

Amazon’s Indian entity is worth Rs 14,000 crore and the figure of its total sales is over Rs 12,000 crore. An inquiry is underway against Amazon in India’s Competition Commission and it considers India a risky area.

Shaken by the Competition Commission inquiry, Bezos has promised that Amazon will export goods worth $10 billion or Rs 7,000 crore from India by 2025. He claims that 1,20,000 small suppliers connected to Amazon’s online retail will benefit from this.

.@amazon Founder and CEO @JeffBezos talks about our commitment to invest in Indian #MSMEs at #AmazonSmbhav

— Amazon India News (@AmazonNews_IN) January 15, 2020

Amazon currently occupies one-third of India’s online market but the company is incurring losses because it offers heavy discounts. Its total loss in the year 2018 was around Rs 6,300 crore, but the company wants to get a foothold in the Indian market, so it can leave its rival Flipkart behind. 

There are several entanglements in this claim by Amazon. The first is that Amazon’s exports from India till now are next to nothing and there is no mention of exports from India in Amazon’s 2018 annual report. India’s total exports have been steadily falling for the past six years.

The second big factor is that Amazon considers the Indian market a risky one. In its annual report, India is named alongside the Chinese market, where Amazon has been unable to make inroads due to government restrictions.

India has been mentioned just nine times in Amazon’s annual report and seven times this mention is on the ‘risky’ pages.

It is being asked whether India will gain something from this visit by Bezos or will it be only about taking pictures with politicians?

.@Amazon announces export of Indian goods worth $10 billion amid CEO @JeffBezos' visit to India. The #California-based company is currently being probed by Competition Commission of India (@CCI_India) on alleged unethical market practices@RaGa_reports pic.twitter.com/4hqmar6M58

— GoNewsIndia (@GoNews_India) January 15, 2020