The Silicon Review ^Asia

“E-commerce giant Amazon will invest USD one billion in India over the next five years to help digitize small and medium businesses in cities, towns and villages across the country, helping us reach more customers than ever before”, Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO said during his three-day India visit which started on Wednesday.He also added that “the new investments will also help the company enable cumulative exports of USD 10 billion worth “make in India” goods by 2025 via its platform”, at the company’s two-day ‘SMBhav’ event for small and medium businesses that started on Wednesday in New Delhi. 

During his previous visit to India in 2014, he had made an investment of USD 2 billion in the country. Later in 2016, he committed an investment of USD 3 billion in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, taking the total investment to USD 5 billion.

With the new investment, it aims to bring more than 10 million Indian businesses online by 2025. The company will establish 100 ‘Digital Haats’ to inspire, support, and onboard Indian businesses of all sizes into the digital economy.

Today, over 550,000 Indian businesses are selling on the Amazon marketplace and over 60,000 sellers are exporting their “make in India” products worldwide.

Mr. Bezos visit has been marred by controversy due to various protests planned by Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT). It said that “strong protests” were carried across 300 cities in the nation by about 5 lakh traders against Amazon chief Jeff Bezos. It alleged that the current model of Amazon and Flipkart which involves predatory pricing and deep discounting has created distortionary effects by driving out the traders from the market.