Brad Stone: evaluation

Transcript context

…In India, yeah. What's the state of those businesses? India I think they built a big business there. It wouldn't surprise me if it was still unprofitable. Although I think the international part of the income statement in the last quarter was profitable for one of the first times. But India strikes me as still probably a money-losing proposition. In part because the political climate there has become so hostile to international companies. The Modi coalition has become nationalist, and they’re protecting the mom-and-pop shops that make up that economy. Amazon had to operate as a pure marketplace business and really has been restricted with some of its workarounds like investing in the largest sellers on its Marketplace. But it's invested in Prime video, TV shows, and movies there, and changed the way people shop particularly in the larger cities. Now of course everything has been thrown into chaos by COVID-19. I wouldn't call that a failure, it’s still a bit of massively expensive work in progress. I quote Bezos in the book as saying, “The future of the world is the United States, China, and India. We need to succeed in two out of three.” They're not taking no for an answer. The interesting thing in India is it does seem like the game is still afoot because Flipkart, to my mind, I haven’t thought about this until reading the book, totally screwed up by selling to Walmart. If Flipkart were still an independent Indian national company, absolutely the Modi regime (to my mind) would be putting their fingers on the scale.…

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