Amazon Will Continue To Invest In New Biz: Manish Tiwary

BENGALURU : E-commerce marketplace Amazon India will continue to try out and invest in new business opportunities, even after the US-based e-tailer discontinued some of its verticals recently, said a top company executive.

It would also scale up and invest significantly in grocery, social commerce, business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, pharmacy over the next year.

“Our DNA is of an innovator, where we like to try new things. For any new business, we look at if it is going to be big enough, will it be a differentiator, and the technology and economics of it. If you do any innovation, some succeed, some don’t," Manish Tiwary, country manager of Amazon’s India consumer business said in an interview.  

In November, Amazon India said it is winding down its food delivery business, exiting its Amazon Academy online learning platform and discontinuing Amazon Distribution, a wholesale ecommerce website available to kiranas in Bengaluru, Mysore and Hubli.  The decision is part of its review process, it said.

Both the edtech vertical and food delivery were launched in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic.

In the case of Amazon Distribution, for instance, Tiwary said it was felt that the business wasn’t able to differentiate itself. Therefore as part of its assessment portfolio review, the company decided to discontinue it and go behind Amazon Business.

“…But even when we are doing something like this, we continue to build new businesses as well. Amazon Live and GlowRoad, as well as pharmacy expansion are great examples," he added.

Amazon acquired social commerce startup GlowRoad in April, this year. Rival Flipkart, too, had launched Shopsy in 2021, aimed at new e-commerce customers with a zero commission, low-cost marketplace model. Shopsy crossed 100 million users in September 2022.