Jeff Bezos might be visiting India in the New Year
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- Local news reports suggest Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is planning a trip to India in January.
- India has been bringing in more stringent e-commerce laws this year which could affect Amazon's business.
- Amazon named India's changing regulatory landscape as a potential threat in its last quarterly filing.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Jeff Bezos' 2020 could be kicking off with a trip to India.
Indian newspaper The Economic Times reports that Bezos is set to make a trip to India in January, and is likely to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The visit will officially be to kick off an annually-held Amazon event supporting small- and medium-sized businesses, the Times reports.
"We do not have any plans to share at present for this," an Amazon spokesperson told the Times when asked about the visit. Amazon was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Business Insider.
The Indian government has been steadily upping the pressure on Amazon and local Walmart-owned e-commerce rival Flipkart, bringing in stricter regulation.
In February Amazon had to scramble to comply with new regulations tightening a ban on foreign investment in "multi-brand retailing," which applies to any store that sells lots of variations on a product from different retailers. Earlier this month India's Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) introduced new draft regulation for consumer protection which would - among other things - clamp down on the sale of counterfeit goods online.
In its third-quarter results Amazon named India's changing regulatory landscape as a risk-factor. "There are substantial uncertainties regarding the interpretation of PRC [People's Republic of China] and Indian laws and regulations, and it is possible that these governments will ultimately take a view contrary to ours," the company wrote in an SEC filing.
Amazon doesn't disclose how much of its business comes from India, but in May 2018 Forbes reported Amazon India was worth roughly $16 billion. Earlier this week Jeff Bezos told reporters Amazon's Indian business is doing "extremely well" and "growing very rapidly," per LiveMint.
"Regulatory stability is the thing that we would always hope for India. Whatever the regulations are... they are stable in time and that's one of the things we're hoping will now be true. We'll see," Bezos said.