Jeff Bezos, meet Mukesh Ambani. It’s time the Amazon.com Inc. boss took notice of his real rival in India, the only billion-strong consumer market open to Western tech firms. While Walmart Inc.’s acquisition this year of Flipkart Online Services Pvt., a homegrown e-tailer, might have given the impression that the battle for India would be an all-American contest, a new national e-commerce policy doing the rounds in New Delhi should disabuse Bezos of that notion.

The government has asked American e-commerce major Amazon to set up a server in India as it looks to prevent unbridled migration of the personal data of customers. Recently, Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad conveyed this to Amazon India head Amit Agarwal. In the past too, the government has been vocal about data localisation, engaging with companies such as Google, WhatsApp and Facebook on the issue.

New Delhi/Bengaluru: India’s largest e-commerce firms Amazon Seller Services Pvt. Ltd and Flipkart Pvt. Ltd are lobbying the government to scrap the entire draft e-commerce policy, which recommends strict restrictions on online retail, including curbs on discounts, people familiar with the matter said.

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is racing to pull his private space company out of start-up mode and move into production amid signals that his firm’s heavy rocket set for lift-off in 2020 may slip behind schedule, according to people familiar with the project.

It may be the most successful venture investment of all time. In 1995, Jackie and Mike Bezos plowed $245,573 into their son’s fledgeling e-commerce website, according to a prospectus two years later. It was a big gamble, Mike Bezos, the stepfather of Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, recalled onstage during a 2015 event at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

While anecdotal and empirical evidence both confirm online shopping is becoming more popular, e-commerce businesses continue to bleed because consumers need to be pampered with discounts, report Anushree Bhattacharyya in New Delhi. The many rounds of sales that e-retailers launch during the year are a sign it is not easy to convince consumers to buy.

In a bid to increase the services it provides via its virtual assistant, Alexa, in tune with the demands of Indian customers, e-commerce Amazon has led an $11-million investment round in Shuttl, a Gurugram-based urban mobility start-up backed by Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Ventures and others.

The round was led by Amazon, in connection with the Amazon Alexa Fund and Dentsu Ventures, along with existing investors.

Riding on its growing AWS Cloud and advertising portfolio, Amazon posted a record profit of $2.5 billion (or $5.07 per diluted share) in the second quarter of 2018 -- an impressive jump from the $197 million (or $0.40 per diluted share) it posted in the same period last year.

Revenue grew 39 per cent year-over-year to $52.89 per cent while operating cash flow increased 22 per cent to $21.8 billion. The second quarter sales went up 39 per cent to $52.9 billion.

After coming close to hitting $1 billion, Amazon's international losses have fallen for the third consecutive quarter as operating margins in markets such as Europe and Japan grew, offsetting losses the company continues to make in India.

Amazon reported a loss of $494 million on sales of $14.6 billion from international markets (outside North America) for the three months that ended June 2018.

KOLKATA: Amazon, Flipkart and Ola are among a set of digital giants betting on lightweight versions of their mobile apps to take their business to millions of customers in India’s suburban and small towns, overcoming patchy mobile internet connectivity and sluggish data speeds.

Inviting Real Estate Agents, Job Placements Agents, Educational Institutes, Software Service Providers, Real Estate Builders, Marriage Bureaus, Travel Agents, Restaurant Owners, Health & Fitness Centers and other Local Businesses to Post a FREE Classified Advertisement on Cootera.com Classifieds Website.