US-based online retail giant Amazon.com is likely to launch an e-commerce portal exclusively for India, in view of its growing business from the country.
The company has even started recruiting people for its India e-commerce initiative, sources in the know said.
When contacted, a spokesperson for Amazon.com Software Development Centre in Hyderabad said, “It is premature to comment on the launch of India specific e-commerce site at this stage.”
Sources, however, said Jeff Bezos, the company’s CEO, had visited India in January to oversee the plans.
Amazon has three development centres in the country, at Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai. While the Bangalore centre is for product development, the Chennai centre is focused on developing platforms for virtual commerce and the Hyderabad centre focuses on building support services for delivery and transportation network.
Amazon.com runs specific e-commerce portals for Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Japan and China, other than for the US. In 2004, it bought Chinese web retailer Joyo.com for $75 million. The Chinese site sells books, watches, CDs, DVDs, and electronic gadgets.
In 2008, the Seattle, Washington-based company spent $432 million acquiring companies such as Audible (audio book company), Shelfari (a social networking site for readers) and Fabric.com (an online fabric store).
For the December quarter, the company’s international segment sales, representing the UK, German, Japanese, French and Chinese sites, grew 19% year-on-year to $3.07 billion. CEO Bezos said in a statement after the Q4 results, “We remain relentlessly focused on serving customers with low prices, great selection and free shipping offers, including Amazon Prime.”
In 2004, another e-commerce giant, eBay.com launched its India-specific e-commerce business by acquiring Mumbai-based Baazee.com for $50 million.
Rediff.com, Indiatimes.com and futurebazaar.com are some of the major e-commerce sites in India.
Going by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and IMRB International, online transactions in India touched Rs 9,210 crore in 2007-08, showing a growth of 30% over 2006-07.
