Amazon’s decision to invest more than $35 billion in India by 2030 marks one of the largest long-term capital commitments by a global technology firm to the country. The pledge, announced at the Amazon Smbhav Summit in New Delhi, builds on the nearly $40 billion that the company has already poured into India over the past 15 years, according to the company’s own statement and an Economic Impact Report by Keystone Strategy. Together, the investments place India among Amazon’s most important global markets at a moment when the company is trimming spending in other regions.
This injection will push Amazon’s cumulative India investment to $75 billion by the end of the decade, across e-commerce, cloud services, payments, logistics and streaming entertainment, Mint reported.
Strategic counterweight in a cooling global tech cycle
Amazon’s announcement landed the same week Microsoft unveiled a $17.5 billion investment in India, its largest ever in Asia, which the BBC described as a combined $50 billion-plus vote of confidence in India’s digital economy.
These commitments arrive at an unusual juncture. Global markets are increasingly anxious about an AI bubble, with brokerages like Jefferies calling India a “reverse AI trade”—a market that could outperform if the global AI rally unwinds. HSBC echoed this assessment, noting that Indian equities offer diversification while investors shift capital to AI-heavy markets such as South Korea and Taiwan.
Against this backdrop, Amazon’s and Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar India commitments offer a stabilising narrative: India will not only be a major consumer market but also a foundational geography in the global AI supply chain.
The impact on jobs
Amazon estimates its India expansion will generate 3.8 million jobs, direct, indirect, induced and seasonal, by 2030. The company says new roles will emerge from logistics, last-mile delivery, warehousing, packaging and manufacturing tied to its fulfilment network.
Keystone Strategy’s report positions Amazon as India’s largest foreign investor and one of the country’s top job creators.
In the words of Amazon senior vice president Amit Agarwal, “Looking ahead, we are excited to continue being a catalyst for India’s growth, as we democratise access to AI for millions of Indians, create 1 million job opportunities, and quadruple cumulative ecommerce exports enabled to $80 billion by 2030.”
AI moves to the centre of Amazon’s India strategy
A substantial share of Amazon’s new capital will go toward AI-led digitisation, with the company outlining plans to bring AI tools to 15 million small businesses. It also plans to enhance customer experience through visual search, conversational commerce and multilingual interfaces. Furthermore, Amazon’s AI efforts will also support four million government school students with AI education aligned to the National Education Policy 2020.
This mirrors broader global trends. As the BBC notes, India ranks among the top countries for AI talent and developer activity, but still trails in foundational AI infrastructure and sovereign model development. Amazon’s AI investments, together with Microsoft’s and Google’s, could help bridge some of these gaps, particularly around cloud capacity and enterprise AI adoption.
Yet structural challenges remain. According to BBC reporting, India lacks large-scale computational infrastructure and long-term R&D funding compared with the U.S. and China. Talent retention is another weak spot, as top-tier AI professionals continue to migrate abroad despite India having 2.5 times the global average concentration of AI-skilled workers.
Exports
Amazon also set an ambitious goal to enable $80 billion in cumulative e-commerce exports from India by 2030, quadruple the current levels of $20 billion. The company already ranks as India’s largest e-commerce export enabler, and Amazon’s export push reflects its belief that India can become a major global sourcing hub.
Competing in India’s most hotly contested segments
Amazon’s investment push also arrives at a moment of fierce digital competition in India, where the company is challenged across nearly every major consumer and enterprise segment. As Mint reported, Amazon battles Flipkart, Meesho and Nykaa in e-commerce.
Amazon competes with Microsoft and Google in cloud services; PhonePe and Paytm in digital payments; and Netflix, along with a growing slate of domestic OTT platforms in streaming. Even in quick commerce, the industry’s newest and most aggressively funded battleground, Amazon is a late entrant, competing with entrenched players such as Blinkit and Instamart as it races to scale up its network of dark stores.
The company now plans to operate 300 dark stores by end-2025, underscoring its intent to catch up in India’s fastest-growing retail segment.
Amazon executives stressed that innovations built specifically for India, like Easy Ship, Seller Flex, and I Have Space, have since been exported to global markets, underlining India’s role as both a proving ground and a development centre.
A market too big to ignore
India is already one of Amazon’s largest marketplaces, with the overall retail market expected to grow from $1 trillion in 2024 to $1.7 trillion by 2030, and online retail projected to more than triple to $260 billion, according to Mint. Online retail’s share of total retail is expected to double to 14% over the same period.
“Just on its own, the size [and] growth potential of our business in India makes it extremely important to us,” said Russell Grandinetti, Amazon’s SVP for international stores, at the Smbhav summit.
For India, the bet offers both opportunity and caution. The opportunity lies in capital, employment, infrastructure and technology transfer. The caution comes from the realities the BBC highlighted: India still lags in sovereign AI capabilities, computational infrastructure and long-horizon R&D spending.