Amazon confident of stable ecommerce policy in India

Global online retail giant Amazon is confident of a stable and predictable ecommerce policy in India, even as it expects to boost its sales in the country in the forthcoming festival season.

Amazon, which announced its second quarter financial results on Thursday, in its investor call spoke about its constant engagement with the government on the regulations surrounding the ecommerce industry.

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Brian Olsavsky, CFO, Amazon, said, “Our engagement with the Indian government makes us optimistic about partnering and collaborating to seek a stable predictable policy that allows us to continue investing in our technology and infrastructure.”

In December last year, the government had tweaked the foreign direct investment (FDI) regulations for the online industry, which placed certain restrictions on the ecommerce marketplaces in terms of the ownership they are allowed to hold in the seller entities on their platforms.

The government also recently reiterated that the new regulations would continue to protect the smaller retailer and also ruled out FDI in multi-brand retail.

This had an impact on the ecommerce marketplaces in India though Amazon said it had little or no effect on its business in India as it had adhered to the new guidelines.

The Amazon CFO said the company continues to see growth in India with the number of prime subscribers doubling in the last 18 months. He also remarked that Amazon’s flex programme allowing for freelancing delivery opportunities has created numerous jobs and bought in more number of partners.

Amazon is also expecting a bump in its sales in the forthcoming festival, especially with Diwali season.

However, Amazon’s financial performance for the second quarter did not meet the analyst expectations especially on the profit front. The online retailer reported a profit of $2.6 billion for the quarter, which was short of $2.8 billion, which was the target expected by the analysts.

The net sales of Amazon rose by 20 percent to touch $63.4 billion at the end of second quarter, driven largely by its one-day delivery service.

(Edited by Megha Reddy)

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