Amazon has said it wants to take a 2% share of the UK supermarket and grocery market. And in more news from India, it looks like Amazon wants something similar there.
India is a much bigger country with a population of more than i billion people. 500m shop online and it’s already a key ecommerce arena: Snapdeal rejects a takeover bid from Flipkart.
The relatively new government headed by prime minister Narendra Modi has relaxed the rules that permit foreign investment. That makes it easier for international retailers to sell groceries directly in India if goods are produced and farmed locally.
Amazon India’s Saurabh Srivastava says that the grocery sector is “a very strategic business for Amazon globally. We are extremely excited about the fact that the Indian government has looked at and opened up the opportunity of foreign direct investment in food. This shift into grocery was very clear to us even before we launched Amazon India in 2013. I moved to India from Seattle in 2012 and from the very beginning we have been planning to build this grocery business.” Experts suggest that Amazon could invest $500m into its India grocery business as a first step.
It does seem that India is increasingly the key territory where Amazon and others are fighting it out. It’s a huge nation and has huge potential. It is also the world’s third biggest grocery market after China and the USA.
We’ll see what happens.
