Policy Changes Have Not Dented Amazon India's Aggressive Growth Plans

Amazon india’s smooth ride may have faced a bump in the form of the revised ecommerce norms, but the company has taken it in its stride and is aggressively courting new customers.

- Deepti Chaudhary

It’s a few days before Christmas, and it’s a mildly cold winter evening. There are no Christmas decorations that adorn the office, but it’s a relaxed vibe where I catch strains of George Michael’s “Careless Whisper”.

I am about to tell them that I am here to meet Amit Agarwal, senior vice president and country head at Amazon India. Sensing my presence, one of the two, a tall man dressed in jeans and a checked shirt, turns to me. I see that it is Agarwal himself. He greets me and leads me to the conference room for the interview as I wonder why I could not spot him sooner. Then it dawns on me. Agarwal is mostly seen in formals. Except when he and his boss, JeffBezos, wore sherwanis and posed for snaps on a bright yellow truck in Bengaluru in 2014, a year after Amazon launched in India.

An IIT Kanpur and Stanford University alumnus, Agarwal joined Amazon in Seattle in 1999. As we begin talking, he explains Amazon’s mission is based on “three pillars”—offering customers access to large selections, value (pricing), and fast and reliable delivery. One may recall Amazon.com’s mission statement when it launched in 1995 was “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavours to offer its customers the lowest possible prices”.