Lockdown in India Hit Amazon Revenue Hardest

E-commerce giant Amazon has said that the nationwide lockdown in India from March 24 due to the deadly COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the biggest revenue impact in any country in the international market. After the lockdown came into effect, the company was only allowed to sell only groceries and other essential items.

The government of India has permitted e-commerce platforms to sell only essential products during the period of lockdown which is nearing its end on May 3. However, it has allowed the opening of stand-alone retail shops in a bid to ease lockdown restrictions.

On Thursday, Amazon chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky while interacting to analysts over an earnings call said that t the demand of the revenue side has been severely impacted in India when compared to other shelter-in-place geographies across the world.

“I think the biggest impact internationally has been in India, where of course, similar to other companies in India, we’re now only fulfilling our essential goods such as grocery,” said Olsavsky.

“So that’s cut back a lot on our offering, and we will further expand when the Indian government announces that were allowed to resume operations. So we’re in a bit of a holding pattern except for grocery in India,” he added.

After the government permitted the opening of standalone retail shops in view of easing lockdown restrictions, Amazon has urged the authorities to also allow the sale of non-essential items so that millions of consumers at home can be benefitted.

“We are committed to keep citizens safe and urge the government to enable e-commerce to play its role in the joint fight against the pandemic by allowing the supply of all goods that people need over a prolonged period,” the company spokesperson said late last month.

Amazon India has introduced a ‘partner support fund’ for small and medium business partners in logistics who have been impacted due to the lockdown.

In a statement they said that via the one-time disbursement, the fund will support the partners in multiple ways, which includes enabling them to provide financial aid to nearly 40,000 of their staff for the month of April 2020.

Apart from this, the fund will also aid in covering some critical fixed infrastructure costs, and support liquidity and cash flow for these businesses as they resume and scale their operations after the lockdown comes to an end.