The Lies of Amazon
The big reveal of Amazon poses some serious questions on its true intentions. ReadOn!
India is a country of the rich, and the poor. One large country, one large pie. But, the rich always get the larger slice.
No, we’re not just saying this.
An Oxfam report reveals that India's richest 1% hold more than four-times the wealth held by the bottom 70% of the country's population. The combined total wealth of 63 Indian billionaires is higher than the total Union Budget of India for the fiscal year 2018-19, which was at Rs 24,42,200 crores.
The valley between the mountains of rich and the poor is as deep as the valley of death. And, it is only getting deeper with every passing day.
How? ReadOn.
A set of documents revealed how high this mountain is, making it impossible for the common man to reach over to the other side.
The documents reviewed by Reuters contained sensitive guidance that was given to an Amazon executive for his conversation with an Indian ambassador, back in 2019. Documents that contained ‘sensitive/not for disclosure’ information.
But before the big reveal, let’s go back in time, and unfold the events leading to it.
Amazon and the Indian Govt. have been in a Tom-and-Jerry chase for over a decade.
In an attempt to protect the small businesses in India, the govt. had passed a law that barred foreign companies from being a seller themselves. An aggregating platform is all they could be.
Now, Amazon found its way around this. It established its very own Special Merchant Cloudtail in partnership with another entity owned by Narayan Murthy (Surprise, surprise!). Cloudtail’s share in total sales on Amazon was as high as 45%.
However, they couldn’t rejoice for long, as the govt. tweaked the law. Now, a single merchant could not account for more than 25% of revenue on an e-commerce platform.
To ‘comply with the law’, Amazon set up another entity and called it Special Merchant 2. This special merchant tag also came along with special privileges and exclusive deals.
But, the govt. took note and changed the law. Again. Now, the e-commerce platform couldn’t hold equity ownership in the merchants that sold goods on its platform.
It is then when the meeting took place, the meeting for which the document was prepared. It said that 35 sellers accounted for 2/3rd of the sales on Amazon. 35 out of a total of 4,00,000+ sellers!
Isn’t it ironic how Amazon publicizes that it is a friend of small businesses in India? How it treats all the sellers on the platform equally? Liar!
Jeff Bezos and Amazon claim to be supporters of SMBs. They have promised to pump $5.5 billion in India. But, who stands to benefit?
On one hand, Bezos plans to take humanity to space, to save humanity from extinction. And on the other, he is driving the wedge deeper between the rich and poor. Makes one wonder, what are his true intentions?
Thousands of readers get our daily updates directly on WhatsApp! 👇 Join now!