Amazon bets $35 billion more on India business

Total India investments to top $75 bn; Cloud, AI, exports and jobs in focus

- Suneera Tandon

A mazon Inc. will plough an additional $35 billion into India over the next five years to expand its bouquet of retail, cloud and streaming businesses, boosting its cumulative investment in Asia's fastest growing economy to $75 billion by the end of the decade.

The world's largest online retailer has already poured nearly $40 billion into India, building out its logistics, payments, cloud and retail infrastructure. In a statement, Amazon cited a report from consultancy Keystone Strategy, stating that the latest investment establishes it as India's largest foreign investor and one of its top job creators.

Amazon has created millions of jobs in India as it "invested at scale" to grow the physical and digital infrastructure for small businesses, senior vice-president for emerging markets Amit Agarwal said. The company promised to democratize access to AI for millions of Indians, create 1 million job opportunities, and quadruple e-commerce-enabled exports to $80 billion by 2030. At Smbhav, an Amazon event for micro, small and medium enterprises, Agarwal emphasized that India remains one of Amazon's largest longterm opportunities.

The investment helps Amazon bolster its defences in a market where it competes with Walmart-owned Flipkart and JioMart in online retail, PhonePe and Paytm in online payments, Microsoft and Google in cloud services, and Netflix plus a range of local services in streaming video. After holding out for long, it has also ventured into quick commerce, the theatre of a raging battle between Blinkit and Instamart.