Amazon said it’s looking to create 1 million new direct and indirect jobs in India by 2025, a day after industry and commerce minister Piyush Goyal said the world’s largest online retailer wasn’t doing any favours by investing $1 billion in the country.
The jobs will be in areas such as information technology, infrastructure, logistics and across its entire ecosystem, the company said in a release. Amazon has created more than 700,000 direct and indirect jobs through its investments in the country since 2013, it said.
“We are investing to create a million new jobs here in India over the next five years,” CEO Jeff Bezos was cited as saying in the release. “We’ve seen huge contributions from our employees, extraordinary creativity from the small businesses we’ve partnered with, and great enthusiasm from the customers who shop with us—and we’re excited about what lies ahead.”
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to ET that the company was counting employment generated by vendors on its platform and partners supplying contract workers, apart from service partners, trainers, logistics partners and jobs created by the Amazon Web Services (AWS) ecosystem and its implementers.
“The direct jobs created by Amazon stand at about 63,000 out of the 700,000 employment figure today,” the spokesperson added.
The new jobs Amazon include additions to its own employee count, which has grown more than fourfold since 2014. Most will be indirect and part of Amazon expanding its operations here in the country.
“The Indian government has prioritised job creation and skilling initiatives – including the training of more than 400 million people by 2022 – in rural and urban areas,” the company said. “Amazon’s job creation commitment and investment in traders and MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) complement these social inclusion and social mobility efforts.”
Bezos announced on his India visit this week that the company would invest $1 billion in the country to grow exports from the country to $10 billion over the next five years. The amount adds to the $5 billion Amazon has pumped into India since 2013. He said the additional investment will impact 10 million small and medium businesses that work as vendors on its platform.
Goyal said the company was funding its losses.
“They may have put in a billion dollars, but if they make a loss of a billion dollars every year, then they jolly well will have to finance that billion dollars,” he said. “So, it is not as if they are doing a favour to India when they invest a billion dollars.”
Bezos hasn’t been able to meet top government functionaries during his visit amid protests against Amazon by small shopkeepers. They accuse ecommerce marketplaces such as Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart of violating overseas investment rules and predatory pricing.
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