We’re just getting started: Amit Agarwal, VP & country manager, Amazon India

BANGALORE: Indicative of the fierce battle simmering between the two online retailers, the Amazon office in Bangalore was abuzz Wednesday with elevator talks of Flipkart raising a billion dollars on a day when Jeff Bezos said $2 billion of investments will be pumped into the e-tailer’s India operations. Amazon which launched its marketplace in India a year ago had so far allocated roughly $300 million to India but with this gargantuan investment in place, Amazon now tops Flipkart which has in all raised $1.7 billion in risk capital., sat down with TOI for an hour to explain it’s still very early days for the $75 billion e-commerce giant in India and that more money will come into the local market to help it become the winner here...Excerpts
How significant is this investment announcement coming on the back of Flipkart’s one billion fund raise? How will it be deployed?
These decisions do not get made in a few hours, our intention has been very clear from the very beginning. We've been aggressive about our investments since we entered India and these investments have produced the results that we are seeing.
However, this investment is a proof that what we believed would work in India has actually worked and worked beyond our expectations. It’s quite possible that our rapid growth and ambitions have triggered investments elsewhere. We don’t need to change anything from how we have been doing things over the past year. So,we will add new categories, keep investing into our seller base with things like Fulfillment by Amazon, strengthen our mobile platform and improve our delivery.Things have only accelerated since we launched in June 2013, we’ve added a category every 13 days in the last one year.
How does Amazon justify this investment at a time when there is increased shareholder pressure to turn in profits?
Having been at Amazon for 15 years I can say that we’ve been like this forever. The $2 billion allocation reinforces what Amazon’s philosophy has always been which is to keep investing for shareholders return over the long term. As far as India is concerned, we are just getting started here, it is just day one, customers here should expect more investments in the coming years and decades as we will not slow down. We will be aggressive and not conservative.
Would you look to adopt an inventory model or stick to a marketplace even if the e-commerce sector opens up to FDI?
We do not look at it like one model against the other. But FDI is good for the overall ecosystem as allows us and other players to source a larger selection from a lot of small and medium sized merchants which our sellers are not able to offer. This could be because they do not have the working capital or the capacity. Eventually what it does is it brings more customers as the selection widens. Also, there are many manufacturers.who want to directly sell to us and not want to be retailers of products..
Is the fighof the e-commerce market in India now between Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal?
India is very large, many models will get invented and there will be multiple winners, as far as Amazon is concerned we want to be India’s most customers centric company, no matter how much investments are required. Internet changes the pace at which innovation happens . In India, players will continue to find ways to reach the customers but we have to be the fastest at those building innovations. We will not settle for anything less than being the winner.