Overcoming the China nightmare: why Amazon needs to win in India, ASAP

As Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer posted quarterly results, references to India came up quickly enough.

Finance chief Brian Olsavsky reinforced that India ranks among the top priorities for Amazon, of course. “And we like the ramp there and we’re continuing to invest in India.”

Well, no surprises there. All major tech companies have spent the better part of last year wooing Indians, after all. But they have also woo’d bigger cousin China.

Except for Amazon, which simply lost the plot.

Jeff Bezos tripped hard in Alibaba’s home ground, so much so that Amazon gave in last year, conceding to be an Alibaba customer rather than competitor.

Smart as that may have been, opening up a shop on a rival website is surely what ecommerce nightmares are made off. Think of Flipkart opening a shop on Snapdeal, or Amazon opening a store on eBay in the United States.

“They made a mistake in China. They know that. That obviously makes India much more important for them,” said Ashish Jhalani, founder of eTailing India, an ecommerce consultancy firm.

Bezos makes nice

While India’s potential US$100 billion ecommerce industry is in itself a good enough reason for Amazon to double down on the market, its China faux-pas definitely makes this more critical for the company’s growth that it would have been otherwise.

Jeff Bezos recognizes that. Global expectations from the company are mounting by the day, so much so that a record profit quarter was still not enough to convince Wall Street investors. To grow faster, Amazon needs new frontiers.

Where in China the company tried to establish its American practices, and failed miserably, in India, the Amazon founder has gone out on a limb to localize itself.

The company introduced cash on delivery services to play along with India’s cash-heavy economy, till then a novelty for Amazon.

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