Are we past peak Amazon India? (10-minute trailer)

01/02/25 • 14 min

Amazon India has fallen behind in the e-commerce race to Flipkart and now to Meesho as well, in tier-2 and tier-3 markets. It is the last large player to enter the quick-commerce race in India. Everything that made Amazon largely successful in the U.S. has not fully cut it for them in India, even though they understood India is a very different market and the approach they took in the U.S. might not work well for them here early on

Yet, they have missed out on capitalising on a lot of opportunities because they were slow to react to changing consumer behaviour.

And this losing advantage in some of their verticals makes you think, what are the other businesses where Amazon has a right to win. Is it AWS, streaming or something else? Or will they push forward to make up for the lost opportunities by pouring more money and change their fate.

What does the future hold for Amazon India? And how will the company, famed for its execution, turn things around in India?

Of course, there have been other regulatory pressures as well, which have halted them from realising their full potential in India and forced them to think outside the business model in which they usually function.

In this episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan bring back one of our first guests, Srikanth Rajagopalan, CEO of Perfios Account Aggregation Services and a former ‘Amazonian’, to discuss whether Amazon has lost the e-commerce race in India. Professor Vishal Karungulam, who teaches a breadth of subjects at the Indian School of Business, including software product management, digital innovation, and disruptive technologies, is our second guest.

And they try to uncover over the hour-and-a-half-long discussion where the next big opportunity lies for Amazon India.

Welcome to episode 23 of Two by Two.

This is just 10 minutes from the conversation. But there’s a lot more that we got into in the discussion, including Amazon, the enterprise company, and how Prime and streaming might be moats it might want to rely on.

If you’d like to listen to the full episode, you can head over to The Ken and become a Premium subscriber to catch up on everything else we discussed. Your Premium subscription will also get you access to our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and other podcasts that we produce. Or, if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two for now, you can do just that by becoming a Premium subscriber on Apple Podcasts at a really great monthly price.

Previous Episode

Marketing is eating itself from the inside

Today’s episode of Two by Two is about how the marketing function has been eating itself from the inside.

Historically, in companies, marketing has always been about the long term, while a function like sales was about the near term. Marketing owned the customer—what they wanted, their dreams, their fears, and their vanities. It was supposed to tell stories of customers back to the organisation and, in return, tell stories of the company back to customers.

Today, in company after company, the marketing function has been getting sliced away, cut into parts and becoming something else altogether.

Marketing is eating itself from the inside. To discuss what changed, we had two wonderful guests: one who has been teaching marketing for decades and one who has been practising it for decades. Our first guest is Professor YLR Moorthi, who teaches marketing, brand management, and marketing strategy at IIM Bangalore. These days, Professor Moorthi’s work is focused on the impact of branding in different domains like IT and B2B marketing.

Our second guest is Deepali Naair, who is currently the group CMO of CK Birla Group. She’s had a long career in marketing across varied functions as CMO for India and South Asia at IBM, and prior to that, she was CMO at IIFL and Mahindra Holidays.

In this episode, the hosts ask two simple questions: Why is marketing dying, and how can we bring it back?

Welcome to Two by Two.

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, and tell us what you think of the show.

You can write to us at [email protected] with your thoughts and suggestions.

Next Episode

The mystery of usury

Fintech lending was supposed to be the bridge that would enable entrepreneurs, small businesses and even individuals across the country to get access to much-needed credit to build businesses. For millions of small and medium businesses, and even individuals seeking a personal loan, who’d otherwise not qualify for them (usually unsecured ones) from banks, these new-age financial institutions were the great hope and sources of credit.

Then in October this year, the RBI, like it usually seems to do these days, suddenly swept in and took action. It halted the loan disbursement activities of four NBFCs: Asirvad Micro Finance Limited, Arohan Financial Services Limited, DMI Finance Private Limited, and Navi Finserv Limited. In fact, between the time we recorded this episode to when we released it, the RBI had lifted restrictions from one of these companies - Navi Finserv.

But why did the RBI do this?

Here are some hints as to why. Here are two quotes from the RBI about why they did this:

“Deviations were also observed in respect of Income Recognition & Asset Classification norms, resulting in evergreening of loans, conduct of gold loan portfolio, mandated disclosure requirements on interest rates and fees, outsourcing of core financial services, etc.”

And here’s the most interesting one:

“...unfair and usurious practices continued to be seen during the course of onsite examinations as well as from the data collected and analysed offsite”

That’s what the RBI said.

But what did it not say?

Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan for the discussion are guests Ateesh Tankha and Mithun Sundar. Ateesh Tankha is the founder of Alsowise Content Solutions and a keen observer and critic of the financial services space, and Mithun Sundar is the chief Partner Officer at Microsoft India and a former CEO of Lendingkart.

Throughout our conversation, both Mithun and Ateesh took the time to explain how digital lending works, why private banks are hesitant to enter the ring and play the game themselves, what’s up with the sky-high interest rates charged on these loans, and, of course, why credit is so important for our country's growth and where we’re falling short.

Welcome to episode 20 of Two by Two.

Additional reading:

RBI had better explain why Navi and DMI Finance are locked out of the loan market

For fintechs, RBI is the boy who cries wolf

You can also sign up for The Two by Two newsletter here—it's free!

This episode was produced by Hari Krishna. Mixing and mastering for this episode is done by Rajiv CN. Write to us about what you thought of the episode at [email protected].