China has always protected its ‘own’ and this has forced international businesses to pull out. Uber has been served the hot soup and it had no choice than to sell its ride-sharing business to local competitor Didi Chuxing.
Now, Amazon has gone down the Uber route as the former has decided to shut down its online store in China after more than 10 years of attempting to do business in the Asian country. The closure is expected to happen in July.
Unlike Uber, Amazon will still allow Chinese shoppers to make orders on its global store and will continue to operate its cloud business.
The decision to close shop in China may be due to the strong competition Amazon encounter from Alibaba and JD.com and arguably the inability of the United States of America and China to resolve their trade differences.
Since the retail giant is ‘losing out’ in China, it has turned to India for redemption. India is no doubt a good prospect for Amazon as the eCommerce market reached $33 bn registering a 19.1% growth in 2016-2017. Hence it is no surprise that the company is investing $5.5 billion in India’s eCommerce sector.
However, it still has to deal with Flipkart, which is owned by Walmart. Walmart bought approximately 77% stake in the biggest eCommerce platform in India for $16 billion.
