‘We are here to grow the market and be the No.1’

For Amit Agarwal, Country Manager of Amazon India, it was indeed a very proud moment when his boss and mentor Jeff Bezos said the Indian business has surpassed the US-based online retail giant’s expectations. Within a year, Amazon.in is close to clock $1 billion (₹6,000 crore) in gross sales, a feat which home-grown online player Flipkart took seven years to achieve. With Amazon investing another $2 billion in the Indian operations, the pressure to perform increases for Agarwal.

In an interview with BusinessLine , he says the need of the hour is to keep investing. Edited excerpts:

How do you intend to utilise the fresh investments and over what time frame? How much the company has already invested in India?

The key strategy is same as always. We will keep deploying the funds, but no idea by when. Most of the investment will be used to build the largest product selection, introduce more categories, bring the costs down for our sellers so that they can become more profitable and also to improve logistics for a faster delivery system. The past 12 months have been exciting for us. We are thrilled by the response from customers and sellers alike. We have grown from just 100 to about 8,000 sellers within a year and about 40 per cent of our sellers are already witnessing 20 per cent increase in their sales.

Jeff Bezos has mentioned that India is on track to become the fastest country ever to reach $1 billion in gross sales. How soon will you achieve that?

So, we are not sharing any specific time frame for that, but yes, we are on track and this we intend to achieve by adding more selection and sellers. Our strategy is not to work backwards with the sales number.

We are working towards how we can lower costs for sellers so that we can pass on the benefits to consumers.

Your announcement comes a day after Flipkart raised $1 billion in private equity. Any particular reason?

Such decisions do not happen in hours but in a planned manner. Amazon is committed to India’s growth story and every competition is healthy. We are here to grow the market and be the No.1 player.

What new categories are you looking to add? Which all categories have helped push sales for the company in India?

Our global vision is to be the world’s most customer-centric company and enable customers to find, discover, and buy anything online.

We are launching one category in every 15 days and we cannot disclose the upcoming categories. Selection-wise, we are the largest store in the country. However, categories such as books, music, DVDs, home furnishings, toys and fashion jewellery have gained a lot of traction in India. We have also forayed into regional books such as Hindi and Tamil, which are doing extremely well.

With the way you are expanding, you would need more manpower. What are your hiring plans?

We are very selective in hiring, but we continue to hire every single day.

How big are you betting on mobile commerce?

It is a major part of our business. With the launch of mobile apps a few months ago, about 35 per cent of our overall sales are coming from m-commerce. We are also investing in mobile technology.

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