Amazon is to open its first fulfilment center in India to enable fast movement, storage and delivery of shipments.
India is next only to China in terms of population and Amazon hopes to cash in on a large consumer base, also taking into account India as a strategic geographic segment.
Amazon has advertised for hiring key people in order to look into the operations of the centre, which is supposed to be like a world-class giant warehouse in Mumbai.
Venture capitalist and founder of Pinstorm, a digital marketing start-up, Mahesh Murthy was quoted by Reuters as saying that India is a tremendously large potential market for Amazon. He added that Amazon gets more traffic from the country than Flipkart, a portal with local presence.
Amazon currently operates in India from Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, where it also has a customer support centres.
Amazon does most of its business in India through Amazon.co.uk, offering free shipping and customs for books, CDs and musical DVDs.
Amazon hopes that it would certainly increase if it had a full offering in India.
Amazon spent heavily last year setting up more than 10 fulfilment centres in the US alone.
