To celebrate the fifth anniversary in India of online sales platform Amazon, its founder and top boss, Jeff Bezos, decided to give away cash-back as a thank you gesture, in their Amazon Pay wallets.

What he subtly did was to raise more customers for the digital wallet and push the usage further.

The friendly neighbourhood kirana store is getting increasing attention from ecommerce behemoths such as Amazon India and Myntra for handling the last leg of their deliveries.

Ecommerce companies have over the past year significantly scaled up their use of this channel for last-mile delivery, allowing them to reduce their delivery staff or engage them for more advanced tasks.

For most U.S. fund managers, beating the market this year has come down to one decision: whether or not to own shares of Amazon.com Inc. More than 70 percent of the actively-managed U.S. large-cap funds that are beating the 3.5-percent gain in the benchmark S&P 500 own shares of the Seattle-based e-commerce giant, according to Lipper data. Shares of the company are up nearly 45 percent for the year-to-date, and account for nearly 40 percent of the S&P 500’s gain for the year, according to S&P Global.

His online marketplace might be the most visited shopping site in India, but for Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive officer of technology giant Amazon, it is still Day 1 in the second most important market for the company outside the US. From talking about how Alexa, its cloud-based voice service, plays devotional songs in local Indian languages to Amazon India working closely with communities in rural areas, Bezos tried to ascertain that the online marketplace had now become part of the culture in the country and had adapted all its services and offerings accordingly.

Amazon.in might be the most visited shopping site in India, but for Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of the technology giant, it is still Day 1 in what may be the second-most important market for the firm outside the US.

Bezos, in a letter to customers, said that Amazon now has customers in 100 per cent serviceable pin-codes in the country and is shipping packages from more than 50 fulfillment locations in 13 states.

In battleground India, caught in the middle of two giants Amazon and Walmart Inc worth more than a trillion dollars combined, are the large number of traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers fighting hard to stay relevant. Aiding them in this fight for survival are a few tech companies, who after being at the receiving end of Jeff Bezos’ ambitious plans globally are hoping to finally counter what is now known as the ‘Amazon Effect’.

When asked about what could be the driver for Jeff Bezos’ Amazon business, he pointed out to three possibilities — and India was one of them. Amazon is the biggest e-tailer in India and Jeff Bezos said that investment in e-commerce and technology in India could turn the needle for the company. The other two are award-winning Amazon Studios and Amazon Alexa voice assistant.

Amazon Seller Services, the online marketplace arm of Amazon India, saw its net loss widening to Rs 4,830.6 crore in FY17 against Rs 3,679.9 crore in the preceding year, according to filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) and data platform Tofler. Revenue from operations increased 41% to Rs 3,128.7 crore in FY17 from Rs 2,217.9 crore in FY16.

Amazon Pay, the payments business of e-commerce firm Amazon India, saw widening of its net loss in FY17 at Rs 177.8 crore against Rs 7.88 crore a year back, filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) and data platform Tofler show. Revenue from operations during the period increased to Rs 4.08 crore from Rs 28 lakh a year back.

Amazon Wholesale India — the business-to-business (B2B) division of e-commerce firm Amazon India — posted a net profit of Rs 2.8 crore for the year ended March 2017 against a net loss of Rs 23.2 crore in the preceding year, according to filings with Registrar of Companies (RoC) and documents sourced by data intelligence platform Paper.VC. Revenue from operations increased to Rs 7,047.3 crore in FY17 from just Rs 2.6 crore in FY16.

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