Amazon India: Buyer's Remorse?

A tougher global e-commerce environment and repeated policy and regulation problems are raising questions about the company's India expansion plans

- Nivedita Mookerji

For Amazon, North America accounts for 60 per cent of total results announced in April, reporting its first quarterly loss since 2015. A clutch of countries other than the US, Canada and Mexico, together account for just about 25 per cent of the Seattle-based e-commerce major's international business. India is part of that small international business pie. Against the global economic turmoil and slowing of pandemic-fuelled growth in online shopping, industry watchers are wondering whether Amazon may cut its international exposure in foreign lands where losses are piling up.

Against that backdrop, Amazon's repeated setbacks of other kinds in India the latest being the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) ruling that upheld the Competition Commission of India (CCI) penalty in the Future Coupons case-stand out. The India management maintains that it's bullish on India and will stay invested without getting distracted, but sources pointed out that the company is concerned about the uncertainty and ambiguity in policy and regulation, which make it difficult for any business to plan investments.

The American firm, which competes with Walmart-owned Flipkart as well as Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail in this country, entered India less than 10 years ago in 2013. Its cumulative investments have topped $7 billion during this period. In contrast to the heady top-dollar investments announced by founder and then CEO Jeff Bezos in the early days in India, the company has more recently been in the headlines for its various court cases, arbitration proceedings, penalty by the country's anti-trust body and other investigations. Local trade bodies such as the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) are also often at loggerheads with the mighty Amazon in a foreign versus desi battle, in a throwback to the days when Walmart evoked fear in the minds of kirana or neighbourhood store owners.