Amazon India sees losses for global brand, investments to continue

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Apr 27, 2018

​Amazon has invested heavily in its India operations, which has contributed to a rise in global business losses, but the company has reported great progress in the country and has committed to continue to invest.

“We'll continue to invest in India where we're seeing great progress with both sellers and also customers. And we like the momentum we've seen there,” said Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s CFO, in a recent conference call.

Amazon reported a 29 percent increase in global business losses, which totalled 622 million US dollars (approximately 4,138 crore rupees) for the previous quarter that ended in March 2018. This is compared to 481 million dollars in losses (approximately 3,200 crore rupees) for the same period of the year before (spring 2017).

Amazon is increasingly tailoring its products and services in the Indian market.

“The Prime program started in the first year in India grew faster than any Prime program we've seen in other countries,” said Olsavsky. “We're adding local content in India, video content. We're also adding other benefits, Prime benefits. We're rolling out devices there, and we're seeing Indian developers developing skills for Alexa.”

Although losses have increased compared to last year, they do not constitute the greatest losses that Amazon has incurred in a fiscal quarter. For example, the business experienced losses totalling 936 million dollars (approximately 6,227 crore rupees) for the quarter ending in September 2017.

Amazon has been involved in talks with its greatest Indian rival, Flipkart, a business which is also in talks with Walmart about acquiring a significant stake. Amazon also reported a 43 percent increase in net sales which, according to the conference call, reached 51 billion dollars (approximately 339,290 crore rupees) in the previous quarter.