Monday, April 19, 2021

"Amazon rolls out $250 million venture fund for small biz" (AMZN)

The beast from Seattle is making an all-out push to win over the Indian government and people.

From LiveMint:

Amazon.com Inc. has sharpened its focus on India’s small and medium businesses (SMBs), introducing a $250 million Smbhav Venture Fund, focusing on digitization of small businesses; agri-tech innovations to raise farmer productivity; and health tech for quality universal healthcare.

Speaking on the first day of Amazon Smbhav Summit, Andrew Jassy, who takes over as chief executive officer at Amazon Inc. later this year, described SMBs as the “engine and the lifeblood of economies", including in India. “We are very passionate about trying to enable acceleration of small, medium sized businesses in fuelling innovation and the economy in India. Through the Smbhav Venture Fund, we are going to help inspire more SMEs to be able to build brand new businesses," Jassy said, in his first public comments about the Indian market as Amazon’s incoming CEO.

“The launch of Amazon Smbhav Venture Fund aims to attract the best ideas and empower entrepreneurs in the country to partner in this vision. Additionally, our initiatives to onboard 1 million offline shops on Amazon.in and digitally empower the North-East region will accelerate the progress towards a digital and self-reliant India," said Amit Agarwal, global senior vice-president and country head of Amazon India....

....MUCH MORE

If interested see also:   

"Amazon tells Indian court - Reuters story is no reason to resume antitrust probe"

"After Losing China, Jeff Bezos Really Wants to Win in India" (AMZN)

Reuters Special Report: "Amazon documents reveal company’s secret strategy to dodge India’s regulators"
There was a story a couple months ago that Amazon operatives in India had asked a court to jail one of their competitors.