‘India biz will grow for long... Amazon focusses on customers, not rivals’
BENGALURU: Jeffrey Wilke is the CEO of worldwide consumer, the largest business of Amazon.com Inc. Wilke, an 18-year veteran of Amazon, was at the Bengaluru headquarters of Amazon India this week to meet the company’s leadership team. Wilke said Amazon India’s business will grow at a high rate for a long time and that he spends more time on India than any other global market for Amazon. Edited excerpts:
Analysts say India has turned out to be a much more shallow market than anyone thought. What’s your take?
I’m delighted with the growth of the India business. It was 124% last year (in calendar 2016), 82% in Q1 and 88% in Q2. It’s our fastest growing country. It was the fastest to get to in (product) selection which is 160 million.
The Prime business is doing really well in India. We will continue to invest aggressively here because I think (the India business) can grow for a long time.
I’m very bullish about the opportunity for us and for all of retail in India. It’s a great opportunity to expand e-commerce from just urban-focused and very infrequent visits and purchases to a much broader availability. In Diwali, over 99% of pin codes had at least one order. Our selection is really broad, so we can offer customers products that weren’t available through e-commerce earlier.
There’s a perception that Amazon lost a chance to achieve complete domination in India by letting Flipkart back into the game last year. Do you agree?
I don’t think about what’s happening in India that way. First of all, I’m focused on customers and not competitors. Competitors’ strategy changes all the time. We don’t want to distract ourselves from customers by obsessing over what competitors are doing or not doing. I also don’t think India or the rest of the world’s retail space will have any single dominant player. I think there will be opportunities for many winners in each of the countries we’re in. That’ll be true in India, too.
The rate of investments (in India) will continue?
We promised in 2014 that we’ll invest $2 billion, and in 2016, another $3 billion. We’re committed to spending all of that and we’ll continue to invest more as India grows.
Amit Agarwal was promoted to the seniormost leadership team at Amazon in 2016. There’s been talk that he may go back to the US to take up a bigger role. What’s the plan?
First thing is, Amit is in a giant role right now. And I don’t have any plans to ask him to do anything else. He and the team are doing a great job. We use the term single-threaded, which means you work only on one thing. And Amit is the singlethreaded leader for India. And I hope (he stays here) for a long time.
You head Amazon’s consumer business globally. How much time do you spend on India?
I spend a larger amount of my time on India than I do on any of the other single international countries. We’re in 14 countries now.