Jeff Bezos, the prolific CEO of Amazon, met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and seems to have come out of the meeting all charged up. He expressed enthusiasm over India as a market tweeting the following after the meet:
Terrific meeting with @narendramodi. Always impressed, energized by optimism and invention in India. Excited to keep investing and growing. https://t.co/xhQ58dik3y
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) June 25, 2017
In the meeting, the Indian Prime Minister interacted with several high-profile American CEOs about the possibility of investing in India and turning it into a global manufacturing hub. The PM has been aggressively going about his Make-In-India plan with the intention to showcase India as a lucrative market for setting up manufacturing jobs to the major players.The results seem to be bearing fruit as Apple too has setup a manufacturing hub in Bangalore to make some iPhones in India itself in a bid to combat cost and boost India’s manufacturing ambitions.
The PM seemed to have impressed many CEOs in the meet with Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase calling Modi an “action-oriented man with a great eye for detail” while Google CEO Sundar Pichai termed the meet and the interaction with Mr. Modi as being “very good”. The recent upcoming launch of the Goods and Services Tax was also discussed and promoted by Mr. Modi as a game-changer to lure investments.
The prime minister was looking for insights into how India can attract more foreign investment and I think there were many, many good ideas to discuss… Everyone is excited to more invest in India and I am excited we can all do it together.
– Sundar Pichai
The Amazon CEO sees India as a major E-Commerce playground and had previously committed to investing $2 billion in India, raising that amount to $5 billion overall in the next several years. Amazon’s prime competition comes from Flipkart which itself recently raised $1.4 billion in investment from Tencent, Microsoft and e-Bay combined (with e-Bay consolidating its Indian operations with India). Having also bought Jabong and Myntra previously, the Amazon rival had recently been focused on acquiring SnapDeal making the fight for Indian E-Commerce one between three major players – Amazon, Flipkart and PayTM. The third competitor meanwhile had raised its own $1.4 billion in funding from Softbank to up its game in the Indian E-Commerce market with Alibaba’s backing.
