Doubling down: Amazon investing $3 billion in India
The company's total investment in India now goes up to $5 billion. The populous nation is Amazon's fastest growing region, CEO Jeff Bezos said.
As Indians increasingly move to e-commerce to do their shopping, Amazon is giving domestic companies a big reason to worry.
Company CEO Jeff Bezos on Tuesday announced that his company will be investing an additional $3 billion in India. This takes Amazon's total investment in the country to $5 billion.
India's e-commerce space continues to grow, and is estimated by Morgan Stanley Research to be worth $119 billion by 2020. Bezos said that Amazon India's performance is "surpassing even our most ambitious planned milestones."
The announcement was made at an event in Washington that was also attended by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Bezos said that Amazon would open a Web Services Cloud Region in India this year, and also setup its largest software engineering and development centre in Hyderabad. This follows similar moves made by Apple in the country.
"We have already created some 45,000 jobs in India and continue to see huge potential in the Indian economy," said Bezos in a statement.
According to comScore, Amazon India garnered over 30 million unique visitors during Diwali holiday season last year. At the time, Bezos had claimed that Amazon India was the most visited e-commerce site in the country.
Amazon's investment comes as domestic e-commerce giants Flipkart and Snapdeal are struggling to raise new funds. Both the companies couldn't justify their valuations to their respective investors, according to a report from Mint.