American tech giant Amazon has committed to investing an additional $15 billion in India over the next seven years. This will take the company’s total India investment across all businesses to $26 billion.
After meeting the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy said the company has pledged to digitise 10 million small businesses, enable $20 billion in exports, and create two-million jobs in India by 2025. Amazon has already invested $11 billion in India.
Currently, Amazon India is on track to deliver on them, having already digitised over 6.2 million small businesses, enabled over $7 billion in exports, and created over 1.3 million direct and indirect jobs.
Amazon has completed 10 years in India recently, which started with just 100 sellers. Today, it empowers more than 12-lakh Indian businesses to sell crores of products online and delivers across the country.
“I had a very productive conversation with Mr. Modi. I think we share a number of goals together in India, very interesting, helping create more jobs, helping digitise more small and medium size businesses and helping more Indian companies and products to be able to exports all around the world,” Jassy said.
Google’s fintech centre
Another tech giant Google has also committed to the opening up of a global fintech operation centre in GIFT City, Gujarat, and reiterated that the company was investing $10 billion in India’s digitisation fund.
“We shared with the Prime Minister that Google is investing $10 billion in India’s digitisation fund…We are announcing the opening up of our global fintech operation centre in GIFT city, Gujarat. The PM’s vision for Digital India was way ahead of its time. I now see a blueprint that other countries are looking to do,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said.
The announcements by the two tech czars followed after meeting the Prime Minister on Friday, in Washington, during the latter’s US tour.
Reacting on Google’s announcement, Tapan Ray, MD and Group CEO, GIFT City, said, “Google’s decision to establish its global fintech operations centre in GIFT City is a testament to India’s growing prominence in the fintech landscape...It will go a long way in realising our PM’s vision of making GIFT City a truly global fintech hub.”
Modi interacted with the members of the Indian community in Washington DC and in his address, he invited them to contribute to India’s “growth during Amrit Kaal”.
“Prime Minister also thanked them for playing a significant role in strengthening India-US ties, and highlighted future areas of bilateral partnership,” an MEA statement said.