A Package To India

Amazon and Walm art arespending billions ofdollars to turn Indians intodevoted customers.

- Brad Stone & Saritha Rai

Like many neighborhood stores in India, the Sri Lakshmi Venkateshwara Kirana is tiny and cramped. Single-rupee shampoo packets and bags of potato chips hang from ceiling hooks, jars full of colorful candies and sesame brittle sit on the counter. Sacks of rice and lentils are stacked waist-high, occupying nearly every square inch of the floor. It may not look like it has much to offer in the way of merchandise, but this kirana, in the southern village of Madikere, sells practically everything.

Last year the shop’s 27-year-old owner, Gangadhar N., joined thousands of other small Indian retailers in partnering with Amazon.com Inc. While cows and roosters ramble outside on the dirt lane and women walk by with bales of hay balanced on their heads, Gangadhar, who uses only a single letter as his last name as is common in India, displays Amazon’s selection to villagers on a smartphone and shows them how to find things and get the best prices. “I’m the person between Amazon and the people who shop online,” he says proudly.

Enlisting local shop owners to serve as envoys for online buying is part of Amazon’s foray into India, one of the last frontiers of e-commerce. India has a population of 1.3 billion, hundreds of millions of whom now own smartphones and are just getting their first glimpse of the cornucopia of consumption that’s accessible online. Winning here is all the more important after Amazon bombed in another immense market, China.