Jeff Bezos’ reply to protestors: Will sell your goods abroad; Amazon to take ‘Make in India’ global

While five lakh Indian retailers are staging a protest outside Amazon’s SMBhav event in New Delhi, Jeff Bezos spread olive branches to the traders and said that the e-commerce behemoth plans to globally sell $10 billion worth goods sourced from the Narendra Modi government’s Make in India initiative. The company plans to achieve this by the end of 2025, Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, told reporters at an event on Wednesday. “We are going to use Amazon’s size, scope and global footprint to export outside India $10 billion of Make in India goods by the year 2025,” he said. He added that he has been in talks with several artisans who have benefitted from Amazon’s platform.

However, not everyone is buying Amazon’s narrative around supporting India’s businesses. While Amazon also announced an additional $1 billion investment for digitizing India’s SME businesses, trade body CAIT said that the same is merely a “promotional finance” and also called it “ridiculous”. “It is not an investment but a promotional finance to Amazon India to crush retail trade and encourage his team in India to do more predatory pricing and deep discounting,” Praveen Khandelwal, General Secretary, CAIT said in a statement.