# Amazon's SVP on Quick Commerce Launch, AI Strategy, and Career Advice That Built $13B Exports!

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Varun Mayya
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohyyTcpCRFo
- **Дата:** 18.02.2025
- **Длительность:** 20:33
- **Просмотры:** 46,078
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/12048

## Описание

In this insightful interview, Amit Agarwal, Senior Vice President of Emerging Markets at Amazon, offers his perspectives on India’s digital transformation and Amazon’s 20-year journey in the country.

Amit traces Amazon’s evolution in India, from establishing the remote development centre in 2004 to launching the commerce business in 2013. He discusses the significant impact Amazon has had in India, including the creation of 1.4 million jobs and enabling $13 billion in exports. He also shares the success story of Skillmatics, an Indian toy company that grew 50x in just five years through Amazon’s platform. Additionally, Amit highlights the role of UPI, GST, and digital infrastructure in fueling India’s e-commerce growth, and explores how GenAI is transforming the industry.

Finally, Amit reflects on his 25-year career at Amazon, offering valuable career insights and sharing how the company has evolved over time.

This interview is a must-watch for anyone curious about the intersection 

## Транскрипт

### Introduction []

ladies and gentlemen today I'm with Amit Agarwal who you know just to briefly describe him kind of started Amazon in India it's been a long journey for you today you are um SVP of emerging markets and you know the first question I want to start off with firstly thank you for doing this but I think the first question I want to start off with is I was in the US in May UK like maybe a month ago and I came back to India and for some reason I was even more inspired by India because it went from ah this is it's impossible for us to get there two it is now inevitable so this tagline that you have India raar I think everyone feels it right and I definitely felt it when I came back do you feel the same way I think you said we can get there you don't need to get there I think we are getting somewhere that could be even cooler uh you know that's kind of what the vibe is because even when I come here uh it's just a different energy it just paace is different just different and to that you have all the warmth that you have of India so just to give you some context uh Amazon in India actually started in 2004 uh I was part of the team that came here that started our remote Development Center been 20 years and then we started Amazon in India in 2013 which is our Commerce business uh and very early we uh during the same time uh there was this uh Vision that The Honorable prime minister had set up about a new digital India this was about getting to a trillion dollar digital economy and programs such as made make in India and skill India were getting popular and we realized that our business priorities overlap at India's priorities and that's how the first edition of sov came about where we said let's solidify that uh in three pledges and we pledge to digitize small businesses uh create jobs and enable exports and we very excited by the uh by the progress that we' have seen we've actually created uh you know 1 4 million jobs to give you a perspective that's 30% of all it sector jobs is created by Amazon enable $13 billion in exports which is about 3% of India's b2c exports if you exclude petroleum and jewelry and digitize 12. 4 million businesses so now when I come to this edition of sov um you know the prime minister's vision of a vixit bat by 2047 reflects the kind of the feeling that you have you know uh I think the notion of what develop India would be might be far Richer there might be only one such nation that is so rich in its diversity and its culture uh and yet has its own definition of what uh develop means and we are super excited by that uh we see this as a defining moment to be participating in that vision and that's the theme of the sum of N India K raar uh you know that's what we want to cement again the commitment that we have uh to that Vision interesting

### How Amazon Transformed Small Businesses in India [2:56]

you know there are two start kinds of startups in India right one is of course we hear about it in the media all the time the Unicorn startup you know the cash guzzler the one that goes out and raises you know half a million dollars or a million dollar or $100 million from the other side there's this there's the more typical the more usual the small business and I don't think there's a single person in this country who's had more experience working with small businesses than you do so I want you to paint a picture for me in 2024 compared to you know when this all started which is let's say I was selling socks online paint a road map for me what should I do now that I can actually build a sustainable small business with actual profits that I can take back home not relying on anybody else's money well I think the um I mean let me give you a different story right uh because what happens is uh a stock startup would be a different startup but there are several small businesses that start their Journey on Amazon trying to have a creative idea create a product manufacture the product and sell it to customers now typically in if you think about pre e-commerce error you would have to find a Shell space somewhere yeah you would need distribution you would need marketing you would need all those expenses that make the cost of creating a brand uh both expensive and also require you to do all the mck that's not related to your core idea the core Ingenuity that you have of what you're trying to create so uh there's a startup if you will called uh skillmatics started 5 years ago um by a couple of entrepreneurs in India they had this Vision to create toys for kids and these were educational toys they started on Amazon the business in 5 years so what happens is they have to list their products now they can suddenly take advantage of Amazon's distribution scale of reaching out to customers their products could be listed on Amazon India Amazon us Amazon UK and across the world uh suddenly they have access to hundreds of millions of customers and also global Shipping and global Shipping all they need to do is put it in a box and shipping to one of the warehouse we would take care of it we would place it wherever they want to sell it they can use Amazon ads to Showcase their products to customers and drive traffic to their listings and through that process their business has grown 50 times in 5 years they have opened three offices in the US in the UK and in India they're employing hundreds of people so that is creating jobs and they're one of the most popular toys company on Amazon globally so uh couple of entrepreneurs with a vision in Mumbai starting this uh company on Amazon could reach the world and create a brand that is manufactured in India and now a global brand so I think things have changed and that's the power of Technology power of online and something that makes me very proud like when I get a lot of emails such as these it just makes it all worth it I don't know if that's ever been possible in history to be able to build a business here and then very quickly be able to say I'm also selling in other parts of the world right I think that's actually phenomenal it gives people scale from day one and I think not just the distribution that Amazon has but also the logistics to actually make all of that happen while you just focus on the product is phenomenal because I know like the mck you were talking about almost every small business over the last decade that I ever got the opportunity to speak to is like there's so much mck in this right so I love

### Amazon’s Top Priorities for 2025 [6:22]

it I want to know what your top priorities are I'm sure there are two three things that are on your task list or something that you really want to solve right what is it for 2025 if you kind of I've been at Amazon for 25 years and we are a very boring company so uh our answers remain the same every year because literally we focus on the same three things every year and every day and every moment which is all about offering more selection to our customers making it more affordable for them to buy products and shipping them fast on the library you know we like to say this U when you're starting a new business you know if you have an idea of two or three things that your customers deeply care about and that would not change with time let's call them durable with time invariant with time I would put all my energy in investing those three things and what we very early found out you know thanks to je Bezos uh is customers 10 20 30 40 years would never say I want less selection at higher prices and slower speed and once you kind of know that you take it as an article of faith and put all your energy on those three factors so those are my priorities I want to add more selection for customers across the geographies that my team uh looks after I want to make it more and more affordable for customers to shop and Aspire for more and I want to make things faster and more reliable that's all we do that's all we measure every single day insane you have started

### The Most Counterintuitive Insight About India’s Market [7:53]

Amazon and India technically along with that team right what is the most counter into ative Insight you've had about the Indian market something that nobody even your peers might not believe in I think that one Insight that's common with India and many of the markets we get in is this phrase that India is different yeah and it sort of goes back to what I just said um you know when we kind of launched here like oh you don't know India is different and we found Indians exactly the same as the rest of the world they love selection they love lower prices and they love fast delivery so that whole uh notion of starting a business where you forget the root of what you stand for and you try to figure out what's different is very risky now how you get there is different in India how you offer large selection and low prices and fast delivery could be different in India because traffic is different uh regulations are different you know out here you have to digitize small medium businesses to get selection Supply chains are different Logistics are different we didn't have a payment infrastructure UPI kind of took off after we launched so the means changes but I think the most counterintuitive insight and thanks we didn't listen to a lot of people is India is exactly the same as the rest of the world on the things that matter most to customers yeah I think the message I'm getting back from that is humans are pretty much the same their behaviors across the world the most important thing is all humans are the same across the world and that's such a big simplifier for a global company that while we can focus on local Innovation for the most important things just direct all your energy on the three factors that people care about and the three factors are uh the largest selection the lowest prices and the fastest delivery for our business that could be different for some other business yeah I want to talk

### Is Amazon Getting Into Quick Commerce? [9:49]

about the third part of this right the fastest deliveries and I don't think this would have been a I mean this is of course an awesome conversation but I think the question the the white the big elephant in the room is um what about quick Commerce you have competitors now uh there's a lot of talk about other people doing quick Commerce you know everyone's getting in and Amazon stayed kind of mum on this like I've heard some news but I want to hear it from you it's not the elephant in the room it's very natural I think uh if we were sitting here 30 years later uh and we said that there exists a way for customers to get more selection or bet lower prices of fter delivery it is very obvious that customers would find that interesting so uh and I just said that that's what customers care about and we are seeing that for a small segment of selection where customers can get faster speed they're responding to it in much the same way that there might be somebody who offers very large segment of selection that's unbranded at dramatically lower prices but poorer convenience people might appeal to that might appeal to customers as well now when I think about Amazon because of our focus on the three pillars we've always focused on offering the largest selection to customers at fastest speaks and which means that we have built a national supply chain that offers uh more than 100 million products but uh when you look at Prime members they can get at least 4 million products shipped next day and they get at least a million products that are eligible for shipping same day and there are at least a few hundred th000 products that ship in a few hours and so it's natural for us to ask ourselves then should we take the most popular products of that set and ship it in few minutes and you know uh you're right that customers responding to it so we are also very excited about extending that service to our customers so starting this month sometime this month we would start piloting the service in bandor and it's called Tas right we haven't decided the name I think people are coming to me and saying that's the name uh if people like it I'll take it back to my team but they haven't shared their ideas with me so I would hold on soit I have

### How India’s Digital Boom Changed Amazon [11:59]

would I would hold on soit I have another question for you which is on digitization I think as the Amazon India story has played out a lot of things have been thrown your way right some good like UPI and some you know challenging like regulation and things like that and I think you have taken all of it and made something beautiful out of it how like tell me how is this played out the digitization story of Amazon India has played out well I think the digitization story of India if you think about when we started overlaps with the digitalized digitization story of India so the whole investment which is very impressive how India leaned into creating this whole India stack um digital identity digital payments um and the foundational infrastructure that made it inclusive uh brought Indians into the digital ecosystem was a big uh big Tailwind for our business it allowed us to get sellers sign them up uh and then followed that with GST which created a uniform tax code which is also a part of you know some of these things are not given enough credit uh sometimes when you think of just digitization you think of Technology but this backend processes of just having Interstate taxes was a huge simplifier and to add to that I would say uh just the plummeting of you know uh what it cost per gigabyte for data in India all of these three things acting together was a huge Tailwind as we grew as we brought more and more into our ecosystem and I think that's pretty impressive what India has done and as it kind of thinks forward uh you know a trend that you might probably get into AI as well uh I'm very impressed again with how the government is proactively leaning in with the idea of AI for all it requires a lot of courage and foresight and I'm I'm very excited about that yeah I think gen in Commerce is a

### AI in E-Commerce [13:53]

little bit tricky because it's a double-edged sword right on one end it allows things like for your customers like summaries right on the other end there can also be misuse right where somebody can go generate a you know an AI generated image of their product which might not end up being what the real product is like and I think you know if you see in food delivery there's some businesses that have said well we don't want to allow AI generated images I want to know your thoughts on this like how do you handle the Beast both the positives and the negatives I think you you want to uh focus on what's possible and then figure out how to weed out the Bad actors then to design it for the Bad actors and figure out how to let the good ones come in yeah so it's kind of you should just imagine that the whole world is good yeah and then TR first and then just good things come out of it and then there would be some bad actors how do we deal so that's kind of our approach to all of this you know the Bad actors are very small percentage of well-intentioned people wanting to run their livelihood on the company and then when you think about that gen is a huge enable U you know uh we tested our gen um conversational chatbot which is more targeted to Consumers to make it more helpful for customers to find the product that they're looking for it's called Rufus and we have found that in just the last few weeks since we launched in India it's been used by 10 million customers wow uh so it's clearly that people and this is just basic chat you can imagine talking to it you can imagine lot more enhancement that we could do uh on the seller side uh there's actually in the Su of uh you know this area there we have put a booth out here for sellers to experience for themselves when you want to list a product you can simply put the take an image of the product gen can look at the attributes of the product uh create a picture for you create the bullet points create a summary uh help you kind of clean up some of the things that you have you can use the Amazon ads uh jni plugins to Showcase your product in the light that you want so you could come up with a Diwali theme theme of the product in a different setting and then there is the seller assistant part of it where you could seek out assistant both to get started both to get information but also just find success on the platform by being able to talk to somebody that can tell you what to do to drive sales so all of these are really impactful uh for that they can be really impactful for Sellers and customers so I kind of think of it is when you're trying to get especially in a country like India where there is so much diversity there are so much diversity of skills languages cultures and so on AI can be a big needle move yeah no I'm excited to see that I think it makes everyone's lives easy it makes it allows a seller to generate more creatives and I think we will I hope we'll see a lot of personalized you know I have a product but I want to make it look prettier I think we may see some of that that's pretty enjoyable Amit I have one

### The Secret to Long-Term Success – Career Advice from Amazon’s SVP [16:50]

last question for you and it's a personal question you have been at Amazon for 25 years that's a very long time give you context uh the company we run now has about 240 employees by the way it feels like day one to me still after 25 years yeah I hear it I hear about this day one thing a lot from a lot of amazonians and you know we must touch upon that but you've been at Amazon for 25 years and we're about 240 people now and one of the questions that I've started learning that young people ask very often is am I doing the right thing should I be in this company should I be somewhere else should I go to study something and do something else after that and or should I be in a very early stage startup like it's so many options the world is a nice pool of options at this point all seem attractive and all seem good and the question is you've been at Amazon for 25 years you have been there rock steady and I think you are the best example of compound interest in some ways right and I would love for you to tell us if you were you know starting again and you had these confusions how would you play your career out yeah I think I would probably land up doing the same I I'm in general a big fan of marathons versus Sprints um and the reason for that is I feel time is a big lever uh so if you kind of just uh ask yourself about you know I firstly you need to identify u a problem statement that you're passionate about because I think if you don't find the starting point then you would obviously change and try to find a place to settle in where you have but if you love the vision of what you are doing if you love the purpose of what you're engaging in and if you love the people that you are surrounded by then I think just having the luxury of time and just spending time as you said can lead to significant compounding of your ideas you know there's this thought experiment that one can do that if I had an idea and if I gave myself six months what could I achieve out of it versus if I gave myself 6 years 60 years and I think you would come up with very dramatically different business plans if you had the luxury to spend more time and I feel people sometimes don't give themselves enough time they they're too much in a hurry to get to the output um and they miss that degree of compounding that you refering to so I I feel that uh I like to be associated with durable Visions with great people but then once I find that I I love the idea of just spending time and spending time uh obsessing with customers inventing on their behalf thinking longterm just gives you a dramatically different level to make big things happen yeah and I think you also buil inside the company you built so much leverage and so much trust that now you can try the ideas you really but that's an output that was not how it started and that does require that's a part of the output that you get out of the compounding that you're referring to very interesting

### Conclusion [19:53]

this was I know this was short but this is probably one of the best conversations I've had in the last few months mainly because I think you just see you I can tell right you're very customer focused and it's very inspiring and I think if there's one takeaway that I should take back from this is like go do even more homework on the customers and you know try to try to be the best solution out there for that no I think it was fun talking to you it was very thank you for taking time and you know spending time with me talking about this thank you all right guys subscribe bye