Protectionist calls don't worry Amazon, says India chief

Moneycontrol BureauIndian startups need protection from foreign competition, this is the call made by Flipkart founder Sachin Bansal and Ola chief executive Bhavish Aggarwal. They expect what China did with its own in the first decade of the millennium should be repeated in India. Standing the pressure from the homegrown companies, Amazon India chief Amit Agarwal says that the e-commerce giant is fully prepared to deal with protectionist measures if such a situation arises at all, reports Mint. Undeterred by these protectionist calls, Agarwal says that Amazon chief Jeff Bezos has the set the bar high and the company has plans to raise India investments further. Amazon, which initially said it would invest USD 2 billion in India, in June said it would invest an additional USD 3 billion.Amazon has also expanded its product offerings. “We have grown to 95 million products; soon it will be 100 million products,” said Agarwal. “In 2017, you will probably see us massively scaling our investments in infrastructure, technology and reach.”The demonetisation drive has impacted many companies and Amazon's rivals too had to face the brunt. But, Seattle-based e-commerce company claims that its business is back to normal and in fact has grown even more rapidly in the one month since the government withdrew large-value notes.“We are already at pre-demonetisation levels and growing at triple digits. It disrupted our operations during those 48 hours, not had a trajectory impact on us. The good part is that since Amazon has generally been trusted, the share of cash on our platform was already lower than what others had. So, the depression for us was much lower during that period,” said Agarwal.