Amazon.com Inc.’s only company-owned office campus outside the U.S. opened at the end of August on the other side of the globe, thousands of miles from their Seattle headquarters.
The 15-storey building in India’s southern city of Hyderabad towers over the landscape in its technology and financial district, signaling the giant online retailer’s ambitions to expand in one of the world’s fastest-growing retail markets.
The building has 1.8 million square feet of office space, or about 50 times the footprint of the Taj Mahal’s mausoleum., set in 9.5 acres of land and can house up to 15,000 employees. Amazon has over 62,000 workers in India and a further 155,000 contract employees. "This new Amazon campus building is a tangible commitment to that long-term thinking and our plans for India," said Amit Agarwal, the company's India head.
The Seattle-based retailer has pledged over $5.5 billion so far for India, a country vital to its plan for global dominance. After floundering in China, Amazon is leaving nothing to chance in the country where it’s going head-to-head against rival, Walmart Inc. which paid $16 billion for a majority stake in India’s biggest online retailer Flipkart. It’s an ecommerce market forecast by KPMG to grow to $200 billion by 2027.
“E-commerce is so small in India relative to the total consumption, less than 3%,” Agarwal said in an interview at the building’s formal opening. Most of India relies heavily on small neighborhood mom-and-pop stores called kiranas for its shopping needs, and it’s a market largely untapped by organized retailers such as supermarket chains or departmental store brands.
“We see tremendous growth here”.
Photography by Dhiraj Singh