The battle for the Indian consumer was never going to be an all-American affair.

Walmart Inc.’s splashy acquisition last year of Flipkart Online Services Pvt., the homegrown e-tailer giving Amazon.com Inc. a solid run for its money, might have given the impression of a two-horse race. But as I argued (here and here), billionaire Mukesh Ambani wasn’t going to watch from the sidelines.

The government is unlikely to extend the February 1 deadline for e-tailers like Amazon and Flipkart to comply with latest changes to the foreign direct investment (FDI) guidelines announced in late December.

Amazon has asked the government to extend the deadline by four months and Flipkart, too, reportedly wants more time to adapt to the new rules.

A group of activist shareholders are proposing that Amazon.com Inc. stop selling facial recognition software to government agencies until its board determines the technology doesn’t threaten people’s civil rights.

The investors, including the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, a member of the Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment, filed a resolution on the subject to be voted on at Amazon’s annual meeting later this year.

Reliance Industries (RIL) is ready to unleash its e-commerce dark horse to take on the likes of Amazon India and Walmart-owned Flipkart. Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani on Friday said Reliance Retail and Reliance Jio Infocomm were set to jointly launch their new e-commerce platform in the country.

New Delhi: Undeterred by India’s revised e-commerce policy that kicks off from next month, Amazon has not stopped hiring engineers and managers in India. An analysis of job listings on Amazon shows the e-commerce giant has more than 1,400 vacancies in India. In Bangalore and Hyderabad, there are over 1,000 open positions with software engineers being the most in demand.

Amazon.com Inc shares seesawed on Thursday as investors questioned how the impending divorce of company founder Jeff Bezos would affect his control of the most valuable company on Wall Street and its ambitious expansion plans.

Bezos, whom Forbes lists as the world's richest person, worth an estimated $136.2 billion, said via Twitter on Wednesday that he and his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie, will divorce.

A month later, US-headquartered e-commerce giant Amazon has again witnessed another glitch, this time on its India portal.

Sources in the know said that the glitch was reported internally last and left exposed some of its sellers’ private financial information to other users. Sellers downloading their monthly financial reports (data of their sales through Amazon.in) were served with those of other vendors, leading to a breach of competitive businesses data.

Amazon.com Inc. surpassed Microsoft Corp. to become the world’s largest public company on Monday, in the latest example of the list of Wall Street’s biggest names being reordered. Shares of the e-commerce company rose 3.4 percent, a rally that gave it a market capitalization of $797 billion, according to Bloomberg data. While this is down from Amazon’s record market cap, which topped $1 trillion in September, it was enough to push it past Microsoft at $789 billion.

Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc. find themselves on the same side for once.

The bitter rivals have come together in India to lobby the government on regulations that threaten to dampen their expansion ambitions. Among other things, the giant retailers are asking for an extension on a Feb. 1 deadline for implementing those rules, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

E-commerce companies having foreign direct investment, like Flipkart and Amazon, will now have to look for ways to restructure their businesses so as to obviate the curbs on selling products of companies in which they have an equity stake. The government’s new FDI guidelines also restrict them from selling exclusive-only products on their platforms.

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