The 21st century is going to be the Indian century,” said Amazon’s Jeff Bezos during a visit to India in January 2020. He might have figured it out long before, as his investments are not limited to the billions of dollars he pumped into Amazon’s Indian business. Amazon Holdings, for instance, acquired a 5 per cent stake in department store chain Shoppers Stop in 2017. A year later, it acquired the hypermarket chain More from Aditya Birla Group through Samara Capital. In 2019, it picked up a 49 per cent stake in retailer Future Group’s promoter company Future Coupons.
Amazon is now aggressively wooing small and neighbourhood merchants to its platform with the Local Shops on Amazon programme launched in April 2020. In a year, it has brought in 50,000 offline sellers and neighbourhood shops. “We have been very excited by the success of this programme, which we launched during Covid. It has been adopted by tens and thousands of local shops around us. We are committing to bringing one million local shops online on Amazon by 2025,” said Amit Agarwal, senior vice president and country manager of Amazon India.
Amazon’s push to partner with the vast, unorganised brick and mortar retail market is hardly surprising. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries last year launched JioMart, an e-commerce platform, which has inked partnerships with a million merchants. Then there is Flipkart, now owned by the American supermarket giant Walmart, which is also going hyperlocal through its Flipkart Quick Service. It is ramping up Flipkart Wholesale, its digital B2B marketplace, and has recently started offering grocery on the app.
Denne historien er fra May 30, 2021-utgaven av THE WEEK.
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Denne historien er fra May 30, 2021-utgaven av THE WEEK.
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William Dalrymple goes further back
Indian readers have long known William Dalrymple as the chronicler nonpareil of India in the early years of the British raj. His latest book, The Golden Road, is a striking departure, since it takes him to a period from about the third century BC to the 12th-13th centuries CE.
The bleat from the street
What with all the apps delivering straight to one’s doorstep, the supermarkets, the food halls and even the occasional (super-expensive) pop-up thela (cart) offering the woke from field-to-fork option, the good old veggie-market/mandi has fallen off my regular beat.
Courage and conviction
Justice A.M. Ahmadi's biography by his granddaughter brings out behind-the-scenes tension in the Supreme Court as it dealt with the Babri Masjid demolition case
EPIC ENTERPRISE
Gowri Ramnarayan's translation of Ponniyin Selvan brings a fresh perspective to her grandfather's magnum opus
Upgrade your jeans
If you don’t live in the top four-five northern states of India, winter means little else than a pair of jeans. I live in Mumbai, where only mad people wear jeans throughout the year. High temperatures and extreme levels of humidity ensure we go to work in mulmul salwars, cotton pants, or, if you are lucky like me, wear shorts every day.
Garden by the sea
When Kozhikode beach became a fertile ground for ideas with Manorama Hortus
RECRUITERS SPEAK
Industry requirements and selection criteria of management graduates
MORAL COMPASS
The need to infuse ethics into India's MBA landscape
B-SCHOOLS SHOULD UNDERSTAND THAT INDIAN ECONOMY IS GOING TO WITNESS A TREMENDOUS GROWTH
INTERVIEW - Prof DEBASHIS CHATTERJEE, director, Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode
COURSE CORRECTION
India's best b-schools are navigating tumultuous times. Hurdles include lower salaries offered to their graduates and students misusing AI
