Amazon Will Invest $26 Billion India by Decade’s End

Amazon intends to invest $26 billion in India by 2030 amid increasing competition with Walmart.

As Reuters reported Saturday (June 24), the company made that announcement after CEO Andy Jassy met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to the U.S.

Jassy did not detail the company’s spending plan, though it follows earlier announcements that Amazon Web Services was investing $12.9 billion in the country, and a $6.5 billion investment to boost its Indian eCommerce business.

As PYMNTS wrote, Modi’s visit to the U.S. included a meeting at the White House with President Joe Biden and a number of tech CEOs, including Tim Cook of Apple, Sundar Pichai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, and Sam Altman of OpenAI.

Modi said since his last U.S. visit — in 2014 — the two countries have expanded their cooperation in defense and strategic areas.

“We are working with renewed trust in areas of new and emerging technologies,” Modi said. “We are resolving long pending and difficult issues in trade.”

Amazon’s increased investment comes as rival Walmart is counting on India — more specifically, its eCommerce platform Flipkart and payments provider PhonePe — to help it reach its goal of doubling its overseas gross merchandise volume to $200 billion in five years.

“It is not crazy to think that both those businesses could be $100 billion businesses in the future,” Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said at an investors conference earlier this month.

As PYMNTS has written, Walmart leads Amazon in eCommerce sales in India due to Flipkart, where it commanded a 48% share of the market.

Walmart announced earlier this year that Flipkart’s discounted resale product app Shopsy is expanding both in numbers and geographically throughout India, tripling its number of units, customers and sellers over the past year. The app has been downloaded 175 million times.

Meanwhile, Amazon and Walmart are preparing to do battle with dueling savings events next month. Amazon’s Prime Day will begin July 11 this year, one day after Walmart gives its Walmart+ members access to its weeklong savings promotion.

As noted here recently, whether those efforts can bridge the gulf in the consumer spend share that has steadily opened between Amazon and Walmart in the past few years remains to be seen, though PYMNTS research shows the lengths Walmart may need to go to close that gap.

“Consumer perception is key when it comes to merchant choice, and the 44% share of consumers believing Prime had better deals than Walmart+ is significant, as shoppers have consistently sought savings all year to counter rising retail prices,” PYMNTS wrote.

“Given the double-digit preference of Prime Day over Walmart+ Weekend, it may take more than extra days of extended savings for Walmart to close the preference divide.”