Amazon To Invest $3 Billion More Into India

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN is planning to invest $3 billion more in to India, where the online retail giant faces stiff competition from homegrown e-commerce retailers Flipkart and Snapdeal.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made the announcement at India-U.S. business event in Washington on Tuesday, which was attended by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to a report on CNNMoney.

Investing In India

The latest investment from Amazon is in addition to the $2 billion it announced in 2014, thereby bringing its total committed investment in India to more than $5 billion.

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Notably, India is the second most populous country in the world next to China, where Amazon is struggling to gain market share versus Alibaba Group Holding Ltd BABA, which is also an investor in Snapdeal.

"We have already created some 45,000 jobs in India and continue to see huge potential in the Indian economy," Bezos said at the event.

Since Indian laws prevent Amazon selling goods directly to customers, it operates as a pure marketplace for third-party vendors. The failure to adapt to the local model has hurt its prospects in China and Amazon doesn't want to repeat the same mistake in India.

"We're kind of adapting to the local model," he said.

The report said Bezos said at a conference last week that Amazon is opening lots of small distribution centers around the country because it handles most "last-mile" delivery logistics itself.

At time of writing, shares of Amazon were trading up 0.59 percent at $728.00.