Breaking down Reliance vs Amazon: The epic battle for Indian e-commerce bragging rights

Jeff Bezos’ sprawling e-commerce empire in India is staring at its moment of truth, again. Earlier it was back in 2013 when Amazon entered the very nascent and almost untapped e-commerce market characterised by an underdeveloped infrastructure with only 16 per cent population connected to the internet, and cash being the undisputed king. The then e-commerce market had Flipkart and Snapdeal arguably the only and top e-commerce players. Amazon was able to quickly adapt itself to the Indian way of selling goods online and flush with capital, as it always is being an internet powerhouse in the US, elbowed out Snapdeal to take Flipkart head-on and overcome the challenges. The differentiator then was largely the capital, now it is more of an enabler as the planet’s richest person Bezos gets into the e-commerce slugfest with Asia’s richest billionaire Mukesh Ambani.