Amazon adds to India muscle by strengthening arms

In rapid expansion mode to capture the frontier, Amazon India is systematically adding manpower, technological and financial muscle to all its arms in India. Following the same path it tread in the US, the company has been over the last two years testing and adding almost every vertical it has globally to the Indian market.
 
Amazon IT Services (India)  Pvt Ltd, the oldest arm of the global e-commerce player in India, is looking to raise fresh funds to expand its operations in the country as it looks at technology as an enabler to grow its business and increase efficiency for its customers. The arm has increased its authorised capital to Rs 900 crore from Rs 400 crore, according to recent regulatory disclosures.
 
Amazon recently also increased its investment in its wallet Amazon Pay from Rs 400 crore to Rs 2,000 crore. According to industry experts, this growth strategy should come as no surprise.
 
"Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos has committed $5 billion for India. This is the US model they are replicating here. On the one hand, they are bolstering their fulfilment capabilities, putting money into the company from the massive corpus as and when required and, on the other, they are acquiring more customers," said Arvind Singhal, chairman and managing director of Technopak.
 
The company plans to expand its software research and development base in India as well as take the technology to its other market, it said in its filings. "The company plans to carry on all types of research and development activities of custom e-business applications, automations and processes across all types of business applications," the company said in its filing.
 
On several occasions the company has made it clear that it wants to be a one-stop shop for solutions for everything for its customers globally. In a recent interview to Business Standard, Amit Agarwal, senior vice-president and country manager for India at Amazon, said that right from day one, the company has been focused on building skills and capabilities to provide a great customer experience.
 
"We do not hold ourselves back from investing to be able to do that. Our strategy has always been to be laser-focused on the customer. In all this noise, the stakeholder who is most dissatisfied is the customer. We are always thinking of building a better service. We are happy with our plans of providing massive selections and great pricing and will continue to do so," he said.