‘Walmart buying Flipkart would be good for ecommerce in India’
BENGALURU:SINCE its launch in June 2013, Amazon India (Amazon Seller Services Pvt. Ltd) has been the biggest threat to market leader Flipkart. Now, Amazon is in a two-way race with rival Walmart Inc. to buy a controlling stake in Flipkart.
In an interview, Amazon India country head Amit Agarwal, who is also one of the senior-most leaders globally at Amazon, talked about the company’s plans for the next five years. He declined to comment on reports of Amazon’s talks with Flipkart but said that if Walmart were to become a Flipkart investor, it will boost the e-commerce market in the country. Edited excerpts:
In the five years that Amazon has been in India, it has established itself as one of the two main ecommerce companies here. What’s the approach for the next five years?
When we entered India, e-commerce was mostly an urban phenomena, with a few people buying and price being the main determinant. Our focus was on offering great selection, value and convenience. What excites me is the evolution of e-commerce in the past five years and our role in that.
When I look at the next five years, it will be about: how do we democratize aspirations, make convenience normal and bring the next 100 million customers to shop with us.
How many users do you have currently?
We have more than 115 million registered users currently. We don’t share our active user base, but it’s in the tens of millions—high double digits.
Some people say that Amazon got complacent in 2016 and let Flipkart off the hook…
We don’t think about competitors that way. I don’t plan my strategy on how it would influence somebody else. The general aggressiveness in the market is normal. India is a long-term market... e-commerce is so small currently so there will always be players who will bring in money and that’s good for e-commerce.
So if Walmart were to get into Flipkart you would consider that to be a positive?
It’s good, it’s good. Given how early India is in the stage of e-commerce wouldn’t you rather have a lot more investments? I don’t get too emotional about someone’s adversities or someone’s success because our time will also come in one of those two phases. For us to get close to any of the credible markets it’s a long journey. So as long as there are investments it’s good for everyone.