Waiting for Amazon's big-splash entry into India
29 Aug 2011
Is Amazon.com, the world's largest online retailer, finally setting up shop in India? Yes, if chatter across the e-commerce space in the country is to be believed.
US-based Amazon, however, has not officially announced its plans for India.
Speculation has been rife over the past few weeks that the giant online retailer - with a market capitalisation of $100 billion - plans to offer its services in India in 2012.
Amazon already has three development centres in India - in Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad - and offers it's Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), cloud computing services in the country.
With the Indian government considering relaxing foreign direct investment (FDI) norms for multi-brand retailing, Amazon - a leading player in multi-brand, online retailing - is firming up plans for India.
A committee of secretaries in June recommended that FDI be allowed in multi-brand retailing, but with a set of conditions. Several global retail chains - including Wal-Mart of the US, Carrefour of France and Tesco of Britain - are eagerly awaiting the final clearance from the Indian government before they unveil their ambitious plans.