An operating profit of $345 million was reported for Amazon’s international business. This profit was marked in three months till the end of June, on the back of pick-up in demand. In the second quarter of 2019, the segment had reported losses of $ 601 million. The officials said that their focus is on digitising sellers in India, as most of them fall in the micro, small and medium category, as they spoke about the company’s quarter 2, 2020 earnings call. Amazon India plans to work on on-boarding more sellers in the country and recruiting more people.
Amazon’s Prime Day sale event in India is to be held on August 6 and 7, and for all other markets, the event has been pushed to quarter 4.
When compared to quarter 2,2019, Amazon’s net sales increased 40% to $88.9 billion from $63.4 billion. Their operating income increased to $5.8 billion in the April-June quarter compared to quarter 2 of 2019, $3.1 billion.
Bezos in his statement said, to deliver products to customers timely during this time of high demand and to ensure the safety of employees they have spent over $4 billion on incremental COVID-19 related costs in the quarter.
Amazon recently announced the addition of 10 new fulfilment centres in India. They have also ramped up in hiring and created about 70,000 fresh temporary job profiles. Nearly 7,00,000 jobs were enabled over the last 7 years with the investments made by Amazon. The pandemic which forced the consumers’ shop online, lead to a surge in demand. Almost 80% of the e-commerce sector is jointly held by Amazon and Walmart-backed Flipkart.
An incremental investment of $1 billion in India was announced by the founder and CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos on January. The major of this will be used to digitize small and medium businesses. Amazon said earlier this month the have helped small businesses to reach to exports over $2 billion due to the firm’s global selling programme.
