Amazon’s USD 1 billion investment to crush retail trade: CAIT

By

Maverick Martins

Published
Jan 15, 2020

Traders’ body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has said that the announcement made by Amazon chief Jeff Bezos to invest USD 1 billion (Rs 7,000 crore) in India is an investment made to crush retail trade through its India platform.
 

CAIT alleged that the investment announced will further encourage predatory pricing and deep discounting in the country.
 
Jeff Bezos, who is in India on a business visit, had announced at a company event that Amazon will invest $1 billion to bring small and medium-sized businesses online in India. He had further said that he expects to export $10 billion worth of India-made goods by 2025.

CAIT has termed the commitments made by Bezos as ridiculous and plans to continue with its protests against the e-commerce major in the country.
 
“The USD 1 billion investment by Bezos for small and medium businesses is not an investment, but promotional finance to Amazon India to crush retail trade and encourage his team in India to do more predatory pricing and deep discounting, and to go on violating FDI policy,” CAIT secretary general, Praveen Khandelwal, said in a statement.
 
“The target of exporting USD 10 billion worth of Make in India goods by 2025 is ridiculous. Bezos wants to build a false and wrong narrative to show that Amazon is pro-small traders,” Khandelwal added.
 
The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), a group representing roughly 70 million brick-and-mortar retailers have been protesting against Amazon and Flipkart as it feels that they are driving them out of business by offering sharply discounted products and favoring select big sellers on its platform.