Walmart was forced to pay $15 Billion by Amazon, I think. Amazon-India is already a force to reckon with in India. They have a ton of customer love in India, and they are killing it. There is no reason for them to buy Flipkart. They did the required to hurt their competitor by feigning interest. Bezos is a master at deception. Well played, Bezos and Flipkart investors. Stingy Walmart has to cough up more money.
If Walmart pays a large amount, it is still advantageous to Amazon but does not look like that was the only ploy.
Amazon may have actually tried hard to prevent Walmart gain a foothold in online retail. Flipkart is reported as the largest or 2nd largest online retailer in India, to prevent that volume going to Walmart Amazon may have tried hard and pushed price in the process.
And I'd add that a high price hurts Walmart more than Amazon. Amazon's market cap is 3x Walmart's. Amazon has $31 billion in cash and short-term investments; Walmart has about $7 billion. On top of this, presumably Walmart will be investing heavily in expansion.
I think Walmart's stinginess is also an important point here. At this price, plus the additional money they put in, a good ROI gets harder. Bezos has never really cared about short-term ROI, but I wonder if Walmart will be inclined to be impatient or under-invest later because of the high price now.
Is anyone besides Google contributing. I think I read Google is giving $3B so that’s a decent chunk.
I’m guessing they wanted Softbank out for control in general and since Softbank loves to control, otherwise they could’ve saved another $4B and let Softbank keep 20% control.
That may be so, but now that it can afford it, Amazon has every intention of becoming a monopoly in the markets it enters. It's why they bought the #1 retailer in the Middle East, too:
People love Amazon now, but I think it's time to fear it. They're already in bed with governments for multi-billion contracts, and are aiming for monopoly power. They won't behave well for much longer, and I'd argue they've already started behaving badly (raising prices on consumers, lowering commissions on affiliates, and so on).
as a consumer, i agree. but so do a lot of companies.
Run down the list of private sectors that spend the most on information technology -- health care, banking, retail, insurance -- and all of them worry Amazon is coming for them.
Thank god I haven’t had that happen yet. I’ve had Amazon give above-and-beyond customer service twice recently. They gave me discounts and credits I wasn’t even asking for. I hope it doesn’t go down the drain but I suppose at some point it’s bound to happen.
USPS negotiates rates with companies that engage in bulk transactions at scale. The claim that Amazon is ripping off the USPS is... well that's "fake news":
> [Amazons] rates are kept under wraps. That said, we do know the Amazon deal is at least a break-even venture.
> That’s because the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act made it illegal for USPS to price parcel delivery below its cost.
I didn't read it as "Amazon is ripping off the USPS" but rather "Amazon is benefiting from the USPS needing to deliver everywhere in the US, even places where UPS wouldn't deliver".
I live three blocks from the post office, my grandma lives 25 miles and down a dirt road from her nearest post office. It's hard to argue that my deliveries cost the same as hers, yet we pay the same price for postage.
--edit: I hold no opinion either way on the subject, just clarifying based on what I understood from reading it.
"Amazon is benefiting from the postal service's reliable, universal delivery" seems like one of those stock phrases we tout out as to why investing in infrastructure is a good idea.
My understanding is that this argument is not a particularly good one.
I may be incorrect, but my understanding is that while Amazon pays a discounted rate, this is the same as any other bulk shipper for USPS, and in fact, without Amazon, many routes would not be profitable for USPS without Amazon.
Customer service and total disregard for what customers wants. Not to mention their "mobile only" stupidity starting with Myntra which they were trying to extend to Flipkart but stopped just in time.
I just can't believe that Flipkart still doesn't have filter and sort by ratings. There can be arguments about how effective ratings are but this is one feature I definitely need for buying or booking anything - from my stationary to hotels and buses.
PS. I just logged in to Flipkart to check whether they have added that feature yet. I guess my last login was a year ago or more. Last purchase was on July 29, 2015.
I've read multiple times on HN that Amazon isn't doing very well in other countries (like US, Canada, Argentina, etc.) and that Prime is super expensive as well.
In India, Amazon is so good its hard to imagine how it will be sustainable. I paid $8/year for prime (yes a year) and they're now selling it at $16/year for free 24 hours delivery.
However, I can foresee how it may not be as good in the near future. Try buying a pair of Apple Airpods and one soon figures AMZN is not best place to make the purchase, it's so hard to tell which seller / product is genuine!
You're right. I misunderstood a reply that said, "I pay 99USD for Amazon Prime here in Argentina". Didn't think the user was talking about US Amazon Prime purchased from Argentina.
I'm going to assume you aren't in the US because that simply isn't true here.
Amazon is quite often not the lowest price. And, while they do still seem to be quite liberal with "send it back and we'll refund plus <mumble>", that doesn't matter if you can't get a genuine product because of all the counterfeits.
I never said it didn’t exist. I asked for data. In a marketplace as large as Amazon’s finding a single example isn’t indicative of a wide spread problem.
You won't have a problem if you buy "big-ticket" (I'm using this word incorrectly, but hopefully you get what I mean. Normal consumer goods(?).)
If you buy something used, or something with a lot of knockoffs (Xiaomi) or old tech (GameCube Controllers) there is a chance you will get a counterfeit.
I switched to buying all that stuff from eBay and it's much better. Untrusted-by-default makes eBay a very healthy marketplace to buy and sell in.
I said the same thing a year ago. I didn't believe Amazon had counterfeit products, I'd never had one, I could tell fake from real, everyone is just buying sketchy shit and should know better. I didn't believe it one bit.
Then within the last year I've started receiving probably one out of five products being very blatant fakes. I only order Prime items and only sold from the manufacturer and only brand name, but I still get counterfeit items. It's actually driven me back to retail stores for items where I 100% need to get the real thing.
I think people are posting based on their personal experience I got fake macbook Pro charger (sold and fulfilled by Amazon)
2 times out of 5 purchases so now just buy directly from apple when I need any Apple accessories.
From India, wish there was a way to separate, cheap products (yes, I can filter via price) and counterfeit products to get some high-quality products (albeit at a higher price point).
So many of my recent decisions have been offline because I can't figure out which products are high quality. ex:- phone charger (the quick charge one, wire tears in days), infusion water bottle (breaks in months), Bluetooth earphones (This one was a nightmare)
Wish there was a filter for this on Amazon!
Same thing with Amazon in the US. I want a metal water bottle with a flip-top lid but I can't find any in my local stores. I find them on Amazon, but the reviews always say "I didn't get the brand, I got a counterfeit product" so I haven't bought one yet.
I ended up paying $30 extra for my backpack I bought recently because I didn't trust the Amazon items were real after reviews saying they were counterfeit. And these are Prime items, sold by the manufacturer, but they're stilling coming counterfeit.
As in, Amazon says it's a Prime item, and Amazon says the seller is the manufacturer, but when you receive the item they've sent you a counterfeit item.
Because it takes two days to get to me, then I have to contact support and get a refund and send the item back, then wait another two days to get the item and hope it's real. Or wait two days to get the item, then still have to drive to the store to get the real thing.
And in the meantime, I already used the cable and it burned my house down and now half my family is dead. But yeah, I can get a quick refund no problem.
Why do I care? What kind of ridiculous question is that?
I work for Flipkart and I am quite happy that it's Walmart who we are going to work with instead of Amazon.
As an engineer, Walmart Labs (their research division in Bangalore) is a much better fit to Flipkart's culture than Amazon.
The engineering talent pool in Walmart Labs and Flipkart are quite similar. In Bangalore, there are a handful of companies like Google, Amazon, Walmart Labs, Flipkart, and LinkedIn who can really pay the big bucks necessary to hire the topmost talent from India.
Among these, Google has a laid back culture and does not really excel in retail. Amazon has a stressful culture and I know plenty of people who could not take the stress and long hours of working in Amazon beyond a year and moved to one of the other four companies.
Walmart Labs, on the other hand, is quite similar to us. I think there will be a good exchange of ideas and skills between the two companies.
By the way, since a lot of people are commenting here that Amazon is killing it and they are number 1. That's true. But that's not a very relevant metric. For the owners and employees of a company like Flipkart, it is not all about being number 1. It is more about being able to make substantial profit and pay the employees well enough to keep competing with the likes of Google, Amazon, and Walmart Labs in order to hire the topmost talent.
Granted Flipkart is not doing very well in making good profits right now but we are trying to make the areas where Amazon is weak at as our strengths. For example, Amazon at this time does not ship large products (things that are bigger than what you can hold in a hand) to small towns and villages. We are trying to excel in that and it has helped us survive so far. With us becoming teams with Walmart Labs, I am hoping we will do even better.
Regarding the last para, my experience had been the opposite. Whenever I enter my pincode in Flipkart, it would say we don't deliver to your area (which is a small town). Amazon and eBay didn't have any issues. All the items I tried to buy were no bigger than a home router. I contacted Flipkart 2-3 times about it over the last 3+ years. They just gave a generic response that we are trying to expand or something.
What you are reporting is correct and I can understand a customer's frustration due to it.
But what you are saying is not the opposite of what I am saying.
You are saying: Flipkart is weak at delivering small items to small towns. I agree with this.
I am saying: Flipkart is strong at delivering large items to small towns and Amazon is weak at that.
Do you have examples where Flipkart did not deliver a large item (certainly much larger than your home router) such as a fridge or table to your small town? That would be an interesting example that would contradict what I am saying.
I meant to say Flipkart wont even ship small items to my place. While I didn't try to buy a refrigerator, I did try a 50 inch TV once. I got the same response-that it cannot be delivered. May be they cover some states fully. I am down south by the way.
The title says Walmart beats Amazon in a battle. Then in the article it says:
"Flipkart’s board ultimately decided a deal with Walmart is more likely to win regulatory approval because Amazon is the No. 2 e-commerce operator in India behind Flipkart and its primary competitor. Amazon is out of the running unless Walmart hits unforeseen trouble."
It was a battle because Amazon went to the table to negotiate knowing they would not win. Their entire reason for entering the negotiations was to drive up the price for Walmart.
You don't have to win every battle to win the war.
I think it was a battle in the sense of "Amazon made Walmart pay a shitload and the Flipkart founders wanted the safest possible route to close because holy shit dat money"
Flipkart is losing to Amazon.in right now. I think that Softbank is smartly offloading a possible loser to Walmart/Google here at close to peak valuation. Maybe Google/Walmart can turn it around though.
This the wrong metric to look at. If you look at number of app reviews per week on Appannie, Flipkart averages roughly twice the number of reviews as Amazon with better average rating (4.6 vs 3.9). ~85% of India only accesses internet via mobile.
I know very little about which metrics to look at but this seems like an even more wrong metric to go by. What does number of app reviews prove other than that the app is good at pushing people to review it?
Both apps don't urge users to go review their app on the play store. On this assumption, since both serve similar demographic of users - the average number of reviews written per week has to have a strong correlation to number of new users.
I think you're right. Flipkart is very aggressive with pushing their app. At one point they converted their website into just a big link to the play store. I never bought a single item from flipkart after that. I'd rather pay more than do business with a user-hostile company.
That is a really interesting thought. How is website ranking a wrong metric compared to app reviews? Especially considering once upon a time Flipkart tried ditching their website and going app only.
Because a lot of the internet access(user count) in India is coming from smartphones on 4G. So, it might be that most ecommerce purchases are from apps not the site itself.
Alexa rank isn't a very accurate metric and I wouldn't give it much thought. I would focus more on the actual users they have on their ecosystem, demographic, frequency of ordering, etc.
Well, this does not give the correct picture on the ground. Flipkart is bigger than amazon here. They have fashion portal called https://myntra.com and new fintech play called PhonePe. They are biggest player in fashion and white goods including smartphones. And smartphones are huge in India. A big percentage (I don't know the split) of smartphones sold in India gets sold online and majority (50+%) on Flipkart.
Just using both sites (on desktop, and yes its a mobile first country) Amazon.in generally beats Flipkart on product selection, price, number of product reviews, and search results.
Can Flipkart succeed? maybe but 2 years from now if they didn't have this buyout I think they would have be a for sure in 2nd place. FK needed Walmart as much as Walmart thinks it needs FK.
What if Walmart and Google actually teamed up? Google technology powering Walmart's supply chain? I wonder how competitive they'd end up actually being vs Amazon.
What compelling tech does Google have that Walmart needs? Google has no sought after experience in retail or ecommerce. What would they give the largest retailer in the world? They are a half a trillion dollar company moving physical products. They already know how to do supply chain.
It looks like play to stop Amazon’s growth more than technology.
Doesn't Google have a history of being unsuccessful at supply chain? Their Motorola acquisition was a failure on the production side (though some would say a net win on the patent and IP side). Instead of using their tech for supply chain recently, as another example, they went ahead and purchased many of HTC's knowledgable people in Taiwan...
Apple has an incredible grasp on supply chain, and Walmart and Amazon have a similar grasp on logistics. I think a lot of the knowledge in this space is about control and not necessarily solved by tech.
there is no business synergy for Google & Walmart Merger, the both US companies merger.
What the Bloomberg article talks about is a joint venture of Walmart & Google in INDIA as a separate entity to buy Flipkart 75% stake.
I would guess, Google may take minority stake like 30% in that Joint venture, that may comfort Watmart .
Instaed of doing $15B on their own, and getting google skin to make sure the this takeover will success in long run aginst Amazon to put up $10 Billion and goole $5 Billion .
> What compelling tech does Google have that Walmart needs?
Google knows that I've been researching segways( with possible intentions of buying). Could they possibly use the information for product recommendations, inventory predictions ect?
But their own site is not customized to me when I go there to shop(sure its cusotmized based on referrer from adwords but it knows nothing else about how I got to liking that particular brand or what youtube reviews I've watched ect). Neither is their inventory/new item research predictions using this information.
It would take Googlmart 5+ years to play catch up if not longer.
Google's too disorganized and they don't have any supply chain tech built up. Amazon has years of supply chain infrastructure (both software, physical systems and organization) including supply/demand forecasting models and warehouse operational investment (Kiva systems, etc...).
The only differentiation that Google adds to Walmart is:
- Top-talent engineering resources & brand which attracts talent to work on these problems
- Layers of developer tooling and services that remove the "systems at scale" development curve of startups and smaller companies.
Now if Alibaba teamed up with Walmart... (read: acquired).
In Bangalore, companies like Google, Amazon, Walmart Labs, Flipkart, Directi, and LinkedIn all attract the same talent pool.
All of these companies can pay either as much as Google or more than Google to attract the topmost talent pool. In fact, many of the engineers in these companies frequently hop from one company to another between these. Of these, Amazon has the highest attrition rate due to stressful working conditions and they are sooner to leave to another company than the others.
Walmart Labs in Bangalore has a talent pool that is running a million node cluster based on OpenStack completely in house with zero dependency on something like AWS (of course!) or GCP. That's quite a feat and I think it will help Flipkart a great deal if Walmart Labs shares some of this incredible talent and resources they have built within their company.
FYI: http://oneops.com is the tech stack used for "Application Lifecycle Management of Cloud Based Workloads" at Walmart / Sam's Club / Etc. It was aquired in 2013 but remains open source (not sure who else is using it though). At a high level it is built around Chef solo, and allows you to define application "assemblies" that can then be deployed to various clouds (on prem or public PaaS). Being cloud agnostic means it can shift workloads between different cloud providers with only minor tweaks to the applications.
It works well for a large company with many moving parts and a need for Enterprise wide policies/quotas/etc, but has some rough edges and leaky abstractions. Kubernetes is a more mature and widely used system that has many of the same features, just based around containers instead of VMs.
Disclosure: I work for Walmart Labs on our CDN / Edge Platform team.
Haven't they already? A few weeks ago I tried Google Express, and I really liked it, in general. I could get an order from CostCo, WalMart, Target, and others, over night for free if I ordered $35 or more. I ordered at noon on Friday and got the shipment by 10am Saturday.
This last week, Amazon announced they are increasing Prime to $120/year, and I started thinking about whether I needed Prime. For video, Amazon is barely usable these days IMHO. I'm mostly watching entertainment on Youtube, mostly how-to or edu-tainment stuff which Amazon doesn't have much of. Pretty much anything I reach out to watch, I have to buy from Amazon. Their music service has been useless to me too, I started with Google Play by uploading all my music, and could never get started with Amazon because it was too limited.
The most compelling thing about Amazon is it is one place i can go that has pretty much anything I'm looking for. Drawer slides, Sugru, specific DIY tools.
I gladly pay $15/mo for Google Play Family (music, no commercials on Youtube, for me and my family). But, $10/mo for Amazon is starting to feel questionable, when Google Express gives me a similar experience, without the pain of Amazon Pantry (filling a Pantry box), and Walmart will let me buy groceries online and then will bring them out to my wife's car on her way home (she works a block from the store that provides that service).
I think it's getting harder and harder for Amazon to justify the $120/year. Curious what other people are thinking.
Walmart Inc. and Google last August made it easier for people to shop from Walmart using Google's voice-activated home speakers. Similar partnership announcements followed between Google and other Amazon rivals including EBay Inc. and Target Corp.
There are actually a few possible synergizes, but less likely with their acquisition of JET.
Google's AI tech is superior than others in image and speech recognition as well as search. This mostly has to do with them literally buying all the AI talent.
Maybe a possible partnership with Waymo for level 4 driving tractor trailers.
Here is an avid Indian online buyer's point of view on this:
Flipkart was the favorite child of online commerce and had dominated the space in India in the first 5/6 years. I have been an active customer. They did bring on large deals, like Motorola Moto G and Xiaomi Mi phones launching exclusively in India through them.
But as with our modern connected world, competition is global. Amazon is a huge brand. Even in India the software developer world literally bets on AWS. Yes brand presence is a thing in marketing/sales psychology. Amazon started offerening faster deliveries and that I what, I think I remember, made me to switch initially.
Early days of Amazon in India were fairly low profile. The product catalog was poor. But if you keep a tab on global brands, you know Amazon is pretty much a predator in supply chain management. So they slowly built up their infrastructure. I still remember having debates a few years ago about which e-commerce player delivers to more PIN codes in India. Flipkart was still a winner a few years back, but that is now history.
I think Flipkart lost focus somewhere, got busy with I do not know what. Their deliveries did not get better. Amazon is a 900 pound Gorilla and very silently played their cards, got customer attention and sales. I easily remember how many Flipkart delivery boxes I used to see on the roads daily, which are now more in the Amazon brand these days.
Oh and one other thing: English is very common in India, at least in the urban consumer - so that makes us very aware of the US companies like Amazon (even Walmart) and when they enter India we do want to give them a try.
This deal is the result of commonly shared desperation. Both companies in the news Flipkart and Walmart are desperate to fight back Amazon's increasing market leadership and their spread. Amazon is growing crazy in India, literally.
But there's more to this. It's actually Walmart who is pushing this deal aggressively as they see it as a chance to tap into the increasingly growing Indian market. In past few years, Walmart did try numerous times to set up their shop here but due to certain FDI regulations they simply couldn't get in. Moreover, it is learned that Walmart (once the deal goes through) will be increasingly looking to expand Flipkart's nascent grocery related business. They want to overhaul the farm-to-customer supply chain and hence current stage of Flipkart and their logistics wing could be a real boon for Walmart. Walmart does have few retail stores in India but they are in JV with a telecom company owner Sunil Bharti Mittal.
On the other side, Flipkart badly needs capital infusion as they are bleeding or burning money at a crazy rate. Whatever edge they had currently in India over Amazon is due to Myntra's apparel sales. Flipkart, technologically speaking is lagging behind Amazon. And this is a real pain which almost all online retailers are facing. The same thing happened with another e-comm company SnapDeal (Also backed by Softbank).
One thing is for sure, to capture the Indian market and dominate it, either of these companies had to adapt quickly to cater to tier 2 and 3 cities of India. Whoever rules these cities and improve on last mile delivery experiences in these cities will rule Indian e-comm.
> This deal is the result of commonly shared desperation.
I get that Walmart is desperate to get into Indian market, but what's the issue with Flipkart. Even though they aren't doing as well as compared to Amazon, from the founder's pov, why would he care if the company goes to Walmart or amazon? After all, he gets the money, and he gets to make a exit(from what I've heard)
I don't know whether I should be sad or happy with this news. Flipkart has been the face of the Indian startup scene. So, it is sad to see it end like this.
But on the other hand they had tons of strategy related snafus like going mobile-only for sometime etc. So, this seems like a good thing to happen, at least Flipkart can't run out of money with Walmart behind it.
This will make sure the india e-commerce landscape remains competitive. Otherwise Flipkart would have run out of cash to bleed soon. As far as I know, both Flipkart and Amazon had been spending huge amount of money. I think this is very clever of Walmart, as they can make sure Amazon India keeps fighting for some time.
This is crazy! As we all know, online retailers are killing local businesses, in US it might make sense because the profit goes to another sector of economy, Amazon is going to hire more developers and invest in other products that in long run might not be total lose for the whole economy!
what a country like India is going to gain by letting American and Chinese companies destroy her local businesses and take the profit to the mainland!
Not colonization but this is what happens when most Indian businesses won't be willing to burn huge amount of money to get growth initially. That lack of funding environment is a good opportunity for cash rich foreign investors who have an appetite for that kind of growth.
I can only think of one recent IPO in India from tech space which did well, Infibeam[0]. But then again they had a good business model which didn't require burning a lot of money.
It will be very difficult for an Indian startup to burn money to compete with a US competitor. Considering that the US is a much larger market, the reveneues of the US based competitor are simply going to be much higher. For example, Facebook makes $100 per North American user per year. Even if there was an Indian startup starting from India, how would they make similar kind of money? The US is a really large homogeneous market with good enough infrastructure support, that businesses starting from US will always have the revenue advantage over other nations. The only counter point we have seen is the China model, where the Government takes stepes for protecting local companies. Yes, there are some B2B companies outside the US that are doing well, but I can't think of many B2C ones.
Agree with your statement but here I was talking about foreign VCs funding Indian startups because Indian investors don't have the appetite for it.
You won't be able to compete with an already established player from
US if you do a 1:1 same product. You should try to exploit something that works in the local market like what Line did for messaging in Japan or South Korea.
Of course an Indian startup can't compete with Amazon and Walmart! But they can easily ban foreign companies and let it grow organically in the country, they might get it 5 years later but they are not bankrupting all of their local business with no upside for the economy!
If they had to go down this path, they should have done it years ago. I don't know enough about economics to comment whether that have been good or bad though. Before opening up in 90s, Indian economy was closed as well but that didn't necessarily led to Indian enterprises in those spaces being very competitive once they lost all those protections.
Before 90s with all those protections, Indian companies had become sloths. The economy was in bad shape and the govt had no option but to open up for foreign investors/companies.
If anything, foreign investment/companies have brought better days for Indian customers, even though it means more money draining out to US.
Those industries that are still protected(eg. There are no foreign universities) are still in bad shape.
Amazon.in in India is a Marketplace. Unlike US, Amazon does not sell anything directly to consumers. You will see "Full-filled by Amazon". This in fact presents great opportunity to local and far flung businesses who did not had access to market.
The foreign direct investment in retail sector is not all open in India. Also as far as I know, most companies can't move huge amount of money to mainland easily. Double taxation is one thing but there are other problems that forces companies to invest locally.
This is what concerns me the most. If Walmart does to India what it did in US, it will destroy the lives of a lot of people in India. Also, India should try to be self sufficient as much as possible. Instead, we seem to be letting in foreign companies more and more killing any chance of an organic growth environment for Indian companies. Considering that Americans do not want Indian companies to sell their products in US (IT companies), it becomes even more surprising that our government would let such things to happen.
I think of this as one last gasp for Flipkart. After Amazon entered the Indian market and provided not only lower prices in many cases but also quick delivery and decent enough customer care. Whenever I compared Flipkart, Amazon and Paytm on price for certain products in the last few years, I've found Paytm to be the cheapest (after cash back), followed by Amazon and lastly by Flipkart. Amazon has caught up a bit on pricing while Paytm has realized that offering a lot of discounts and making losses is not that good of a business model.
India is a highly price sensitive market with almost no loyalty when it comes to online purchases where price comparison is quick(er) to do.
Amazon has a lot of money to tire out its competitors to death. While I don't like Amazon for a few different reasons, the writing was on the wall for quite sometime as far as Flipkart was concerned.
I'd guess many people would be leaving Flipkart in the next one year and either working for the competition or start a new company to compete with it.
Many here may not be aware of this but the tech landacape is quite different in India. Walmart actually has a major development center in Bangalore which attracts a lot of the top talent. No sane engineer in India who gets a job at any of Amazon,Flipkart,Walmart labs would even think of joining google india, a glorified testing centre
1 - google is going to participate in the purchase. Clearly a defensive move v amazon.
2 - us companies will now own the 1 & 2 positions for ecommerce in India. Start difference w China and somewhat surprising given Indias excellent engineering and biz culture
2 - does it have one? It seems that there is a colossal brain drain, and the quality of the engineers staying in India is tremendously diluted by those that pursued engineering purely as a safe career choice
Over the last 18 years I have regularly had the opportunity to work with engineers located in India (while I was based in the UK and the US). Some projects were huge, some were small -- ranging from 2-3 engineers to hundreds. The vast majority of individuals I worked with were excellent at their job, and a delight to work with. Same as the ones I've worked with who have emigrated to Europe or America.
Emigration is not proof of an individual's superior powers, nor is non-emigration evidence of lack thereof.
You're right. Engineering [0] and engineer quality [1] in general in China is way better than in India. It is not even a competition. For instance, Google isn't setting up shop in India for their AI labs [2]. Another instance is when large internet companies in India sought talent from overseas when faced with big-company scale problems [3].
Also, my experience having worked and interviewed candidates in India for over 8yrs doesn't seem to disagree with that sentiment at all.
[0].
I would agree that Indian startups haven't done something remarkably good technically till now. One reason can be that a lot of them didn't get to grow in isolation using government protection from foreign enterprises and resources. So they were competing against established players with a lot of experience compared to them. Initially, most of the people who used Internet in India had some knowledge of English, so it became very easy for US based companies to penetrate the market as they could mostly launch the same products without much customization.
[1] and [3]
Highly debatable and depends on which company you are hiring for. Good candidates are going to apply in companies they consider to be good. Snapdeal wasn't known for its good engineering, work culture or hiring bar. I don't know which startup the YC commenter interviewed for.
[2] might just be because of lack of active CS research going on in the country. Most people interested in research leave the country for better pastures. Btw MSR does have office in India
That seems like a gross overgeneralization. Yes, there is brain drain but it doesn't mean that the engineers working in Indian startups like Flipkart are the ones who pursued engineering as a safety net. A lot of them are as smart as their Indian counterparts who are working in US in companies like Amazon, Google etc.
Are the downvotes because of the last line? I would love to prove this with a metric but can't just like the parent comment author. The opinion I stated is mostly from personal experience of knowing those people, working with them or having interviewed them.
Good for the US based players but bad for India. But it is not limited to just this. Most of the big Indian startups are funded by VCs from outside India. So, even if these companies grow big there is a good chance that most of it won't be owned or controlled by Indians. For example, PayTM(wallet, mall, bank) is funded by Alibaba. Ola is funded by Softbank and this is true for almost all the big startups.
Flipkart made a huge mistake by trying to go mobile-only a while ago and is now mostly a smartphone shop. Hardly anyone I know buys anything other than smartphones (often Flipkart-exclusive) from them. Amazon now has a bigger catalog and better prices too.
Walmart could come along and directly compete in the market by themselves. Wonder why this acquisition is needed at all. There's hardly anything defensible in Flipkart's assets, and this acquisition isn't at a deep discount.
I think antitrust regulations are a bit lax in India, to the extent that Amazon would even consider a bid for Flipkart, and the regulators and the government not opening their mouths about it.
Look at it from other angle: Amazon just made Walmart spent 15B, while imagine what Amazon can do with so much cash, considering their past performance. Is there anything they (as a company) failed ?
Amazon search, A9, was originally meant to take on Google back in 2003 as a comprehensive search solution. It failed spectacularly at that.
The Amazon phone, a shot at Apple's massive profits. A total failure.
Amazon attempted to take on eBay in auctions, they failed.
Amazon attempted to take on Craigslist in classified ads, another failure.
Amazon has been attempting to figure out a way to dominate the music category for 15+ years, they've repeatedly failed. They're very far behind Apple and Spotify when it comes to stand-alone music services.
Amazon's local daily deals service, Amazon Local, failed (shut-down in 2015). They also burned $175m on LivingSocial during the Groupon mania years as part of that overall sector effort.
They attempted a competing mapping service to Google Maps, that ended up being a mediocre product (with a few technical innovations) that nobody used. They quickly discovered how difficult and expensive it is to build a competing product to Google Maps.
Amazon failed with travel, attempting to go after Priceline's profits, they shut down Amazon Destinations in 2015.
They failed with Local Register, which was some kind of mediocre shot at Square's market.
Amazon essentially takes shots at anything that pops up and demonstrates an ability to make money. They fail overwhelmingly, and then very rarely they get a homerun like AWS which pays for it all many times over.
I thought Amazon was beating Flipkart, coupled with the Prime membership Flipkart would lose out eventually. Not sure Walmart is making the right investment here.
There are more speakers of Hindi than English in India, but they are geographically skewed toward the north of the country. Some regions (esp Tamil Nadu) are actively antagonistic toward Hindi. English is a good bet to be able to communicate across the entire country, and is also an official language.
> Some regions (esp Tamil Nadu) are actively antagonistic toward Hindi.
People of any region tend to be antagonistic towards crude attempts to force a foreign language and culture upon them. Hindi has no common ancestry with South Indian languages like Tamil. In fact, Hindi-Urdu-Farsi is from the same language family as English. Therefore, Hindi is just as foreign as English to South India and therefore it makes much more sense for South Indians to speak their native tongues and a useful foreign language like English or perhaps Mandarin in the future rather than be forced to learn Hindi.
In the southern parts of the country (Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu), I have seen even the poorer class, auto-drivers, and cab-drivers too speak English fluently. :-)
English is the default language if you want to reach a maximum number of Indians. Hindi would probably be second, but why bother? Personally I like our migration to a common language. I feel that our different languages divide us.
I have worked with e-commerce related companies so I can offer some perspective here.
The battle in india is far from settled, it is important to look category wise. Moreover in context e-commerce one should not ignore alibaba backed paytm which seems to be working on a super app strategy and big basket which is into grocery.
Website visits- Amazon seems to be ahead. From Jeff's shareholder letter - "Amazon.in is the fastest growing marketplace in India, and the most visited site on both desktop and mobile, according to comScore and SimilarWeb. The Amazon.in mobile shopping app was also the most downloaded shopping app in India in 2017, according to App Annie. " This does not include numbers for Flipkart owned myntra I think adding that might take Flipkart ahead since myntra is the biggest in fashion. Moreover play store might not give a complete picture since many devices come pre-installed with apps in India, my phone had Amazon app pre-installed which will not count towards play store download.
Mobiles - This currently the biggest category in e-commerce. Accounting for 60-70% of sales. Here they are neck to neck but it is hard to make out clearly since e-commerce is heavily driven by exclusives and brands like Lenovo and Xiaomi are playing them against each other.
Fashion - Myntra owned by Flipkart is ahead here. Amazon is catching up but is challenging to match a vertical player in user experience.
Electronics - I don't think there is a clear leader here. Due to logistical challenges for major brands it is still convenient to buy offline apart from some sales period when discounts can be really high in e-commerce. Of late though lot of offline stores are ready to match the ecom players, I saw this while buying TV plus they had faster delivery and installation. This might play out like mobiles with lot of Chinese brands who don't have offline networks competing on pricing and using e-commerce for distribution.
Grocery - Amazon has a lead over Flipkart. It has multiple plays like Amazon now, Pantry etc. Flipkart is piloting a model similar to now in bangalore. The competition comes here from alibaba backed big basket which also has perishables and in my personal experience provides better service vs Amazon. Walmart might give a boost to flipkart here with its expertise in grocery. However unit economics are worst in this category. High weight low average selling price means shipping cost eat up a lot of revenue.
Video - Amazon has more users than Netflix. The challengers here are Jio with it huge base, cheap data and good library and hotstar with its biggest strength being Indian TV shows and live cricket and football. This is extremely nascent in India so every network has their own app but these two + Netflix seem the most likely to be around for long. Netflixs pricing in India is pretty high so will be mostly used by the affluent sections and not mass.
This deal was unusually public. I think Amazon was never seriously into it. The valuation is insane plus Amazon would have run into some antitrust issue plus this being an election year in India, government might act tough against such acquisition. The good thing with Walmart is that there might be more sanity in the market since it is a listed company and can't just burn VC money.
Their interface is a stuff of nightmares even for non tech savvy users. Their pricing doesn't boost confidence either which is very crucial in a market like ours. So I think we will have to wait and watch when it really becomes visible and starts making a difference.
Walmart has an awesome research and development labs known as Walmart Labs in Bangalore. Flipkart has its development headquarters in Bangalore too. They have awesome engineers too.
Both Walmart Labs and Flipkart hire the best computer scientists and software engineering talent from across the country. They pay as much as and sometimes more than what Google Bangalore pays its engineers.
With Walmart now acquiring a majority stake in Flipkart, I can see the two strong and highly skilled engineering centers coming together and forming a formidable team to give a tough competition to Amazon.
A delightful thing I notice in their GitHub page is that Clojure seems to be the second most used language in Walmart Labs.
Seriously, Walmart and Clojure? Who would have imagined! I always thought of Walmart as a boring and traditional company that sells cheap goods. So when I heard about Walmart Labs, I thought all their coding must be in C++ or Java or even Cobol (who knows!).
But to see them using a dialect of Lisp like Clojure and Go more than Java and C++ warms my heart. :-)
Are you serious about these links as examples of nice things that Amazon has open sourced? Most of the projects there are development kits to work with Amazon products only.
Amazon has built a giant business on top of open source technologies. Don't you think it is natural for the open source community to expect that Amazon give something back to them out of courtesy?
The GP asked for a good thing that came out of Walmart Labs hinting at the idea that good things come out from Amazon but not Walmart Labs. Then a few commenters pointed out a few links showing the good things that came out of Walmart Labs. All of these good things happen to be open source. So it is quite natural to ask what good things Amazon bothered to open source after having built a billion dollar business on top of open source.
