Govt should enable policies that attract long-term investments: Amazon India head

Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], November 20 : Citing a structural shift towards Digital India and Make in India, Amazon Global Senior Vice President and India Country Head Amit Agarwal, on Friday, said governments should focus on enabling policies that accelerate this shift and ensure a stable and predictable policy framework that attracts long-term investments.
Speaking at the Bengaluru Tech Summit today, Amit Agarwal shared his perspective on India's retail consumption and said the country must have stable policies.
"India's e-commerce industry is still very early in its evolution, accounting for only three per cent of total retail consumption. But even decades-old offline businesses are going online today. There is a structural shift towards Digital India and Make in India and the focus should be on enabling policies that accelerate this shift. It is important that we ensure a stable and predictable policy framework that attracts long-term investments," said Agarwal.
The Amazon country head said the company employed almost a lakh workers in India directly, including tens of thousands of employees in the many global technology teams based out of Bengaluru.
"Bengaluru is at the heart of technology and innovation, and we, at Amazon, have certainly been privileged to work with some of the brightest and most talented information technology professionals and experience the unique dynamism, resourcefulness and inventiveness that continues to propel India," he said.
Praising the state for coming up with the first IT policy of India in 1997, Agarwal said the industry-friendly IT policies of successive state governments, the rich talent pool of highly skilled professionals, high-quality institutes of higher learning, the resilience, tenacity and innovation of companies and start-ups have all made Bengaluru what it is today.
The Amazon India executive also said 95 per cent of Amazon India's corporate team is working from home and hailed the government's move to completely remove restrictions for other service providers, such as in the IT and BPO sectors, to work from anywhere.
"We are telling corporate employees to opt for 'work from home' till June 30, 2021. Almost 95 per cent of them are working from home, while 5 per cent come to the office. We have also brought in 100 plus process changes at delivery and fulfilment centres for the safety of our delivery associates," Agarwal said.
The Amazon India head also said it is inspiring to hear stories of toys from Channapatna or the traditional sarees from Pochampally delivered to customers in Leh in the Himalayan region and Majuli islands in Assam.
"In fact, recently during our Great Indian Festival, nearly 99 per cent of India's pin-codes placed at least one order in the first 48 hours," he said.
Looking at India's future, he said it is going to be India's moment as the company's CEO Jeff Bezos also predicted recently that the 21st-century promised to be India's century.
"Technology and mobile internet have transformed daily lives globally, and India is no different. But this is likely to have a profound impact on India, as a scalable lever to drive inclusion and equity for society. Urban centres will no longer claim preferential access to products, education, healthcare or entertainment," he said.