IPL broadcasting rights: Amazon plans to pull out of Rs 60,000 cr race

 Amazon’s surprise pullout leaves the field open to Ambani’s Reliance, Disney and Sony Group Corp

Amazon.com Inc. is planning to withdraw from a heated competition for the rights to stream Indian Premier League cricket matches, according to people familiar with the matter, ceding one of the world’s most popular sporting contests to rivals from Walt Disney Co. to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd.

The rights had been estimated to fetch an unprecedented $7.7 billion (nearly Rs 60,000 crore). The US giant is planning to throw in the towel rather than get into a bidding war, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing internal deliberations. While Amazon has already invested more than $6 billion in the country, more spending merely for the online streaming rights to the league didn’t make business sense, they said.

Representatives for Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Amazon’s surprise pullout leaves the field open to Ambani’s Reliance, Disney and Sony Group Corp., who’re betting the game will help them dominate an Indian consumer market increasingly going online. Whichever company scores the deal could also bolster their position as a leading media player in a country of 1.4 billion where the English sport enjoys cult-like status.

Billionaire tech pioneer Nilekani takes on Amazon, Walmart in India

 India has become a battlefield for some global retail behemoths that are either shut out of China or are struggling to compete with local rivals there

He co-founded software powerhouse Infosys Ltd., became a billionaire and went on to spearhead a colossal government program to create biometric identification for India’s almost 1.4 billion people. Now 66, Nandan Nilekani has one more ambitious goal. The high-profile mogul is helping Prime Minister Narendra Modi build an open technology network that seeks to level the playing field for small merchants in the country’s fragmented but fast-growing $1 trillion retail market.

Its stated purpose is to create a freely accessible online system where traders and consumers can buy and sell everything from 23-cent detergent bars to $1,800 airline tickets. But its unspoken objective is to eventually curb the powers of Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.-owned Flipkart, whose online domination has alarmed small merchants and the millions of local mom-and-pop stores, called kirana, that form the nation’s retail backbone…

BigBasket eyes 30% rise in GMV to Rs 13,000 crore this fiscal

 

BigBasket co-founder and CEO Hari Menon said that the company will significantly scale up offline stores from 90 to 695 in a year to reach out to 100 per cent of its customer base.

Online grocery seller BigBasket on Wednesday said it expects gross merchandise value on its platform to grow by 30 per cent to Rs 13,000 crore in the current fiscal with push from its quick commerce business and expansion of presence across the country.

BigBasket co-founder and CEO Hari Menon said that the company will significantly scale up offline stores from 90 to 695 in a year to reach out to 100 per cent of its customer base.

"The expected GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) for financial year 2022-23 is Rs 13,000 crore," Menon said.

The Tata group firm has recorded GMV of around Rs 10,000 crore in 2021-22.

My mother had me when she was 17: Jeff Bezos testifies before US Congress

Amazon founder and CEO talks about personal life and narrates the difficulties the company faced in initial years of its existence

International News: Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, spoke about his personal life and narrated the difficulties his company faced in its initial years when he testified before the US Congress. “I’m Jeff Bezos. I founded ‘Amazon’ 26 years ago with the long-term mission of making it Earth’s most customer-centric company. My mom, Jackie, had me when she was a 17-year-old high school student in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Being pregnant in high school was not popular in Albuquerque in 1964. It was difficult for her,” he said in his testimony before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law .

The world’s richest man said that when the school tried to kick out his mother, his grandfather went to bat for her. “After some negotiation, the principal said, “OK, she can stay and finish high school, but she can’t do any extracurricular activities, and she can’t have a locker.” My grandfather took the deal, and my mother finished high school, though she wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage with her classmates to get her diploma,” he said. He further revealed that determined to keep up with her education, she enrolled in night school, picking classes led by professors who would let her bring an infant to class.

‘My dad’s name is Miguel’

“She would show up with two duffel bags–one full of textbooks, and one packed with diapers, bottles, and anything that would keep me interested and quiet for a few minutes. My dad’s name is Miguel. He adopted me when I was four years old,” said the Amazon CEO. “He was 16 when he came to the United States from Cuba as part of Operation Pedro Pan, shortly after Castro took over. My dad arrived in America alone. His parents felt he’d be safer here. His mom imagined America would be cold, so she made him a jacket sewn entirely out of cleaning cloths, the only material they had on hand,” added Bezos. “We still have that jacket; it hangs in my parents’ dining room.”

Govt wants ‘origin of products’ displayed, calls e-commerce firms for meet

This follows the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) platform making it mandatory for its listed sellers to specify the country of origin while registering all new products on the portal

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has called e-commerce majors, including Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and Paytm, for a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the ‘displaying origin of the product’ on these platforms, as anti-China sentiment picks up in the country. This follows the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) platform making it mandatory for its listed sellers to specify the country of origin while registering all new products on the portal.

The border stand-off between India and China has sparked a campaign here that is gaining momentum to boycott Chinese products.The meeting is being organised on a video conferencing platform, according to people in the know. Ministry officials said that this issue has come up earlier and implementation issues for e-marketplaces would be discussed at the meeting on Wednesday. Among other invitees to the discussion are Pepperfry and The E-commerce Council of India.

E-commerce executives said asking sellers to fill up information about ‘country of origin’ for new listings of products is not complicated. However, the challenge is that the millions of existing products already listed on the e-commerce platforms don’t have those details and it would be a very “time consuming” process for the sellers to mark the country of origin for those products. However, for some products, this information is already available…Read More

Why Facebook, Reliance Jio deal is a wake-up call for Amazon, Flipkart

Reliance Jio-Facebook deal is an attempt to marry e-commerce with social media, say analysts.

As Facebook, the world’s largest social media company, invests $5.7 billion for a 9.99 per cent stake in Reliance Jio Platforms, the deal is also seen as a powerful alliance to take on formidable players in e-commerce and payments space such as Amazon, Flipkart and Google. The partnership is expected to help Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance’s e-commerce venture JioMart to take on players such as Amazon and Flipkart in the Indian online commerce market, backed by Facebook. According to industry insiders and analysts, the market opportunities for online commerce in the country is expected to touch $200 billion by 2028 from $30 billion in 2018.

ALSO READ: Facebook-RIL deal to drive investors’ confidence in India’s telecom space

“(Out of the investment made by Facebook) about Rs 15,000 crore would remain with Jio, and this is a huge amount which JioMart can use for building its (e-commerce) network. If they are able to execute this properly on the ground, I think they are going to create massive problems for the likes of Amazon and Flipkart due to the kind of scale that they can achieve,” said Satish Meena, a senior forecast analyst at Forrester Research.

To begin with, Meena said, JioMart is expected to aggressively chase the grocery space, where they can reach a large number of households and work in a way where customers end up buying a lot of services from Reliance itself, related to areas such as mobile connection, television, music and education. “The bigger worry for Amazon and Flipkart now is to reevaluate their business model or logistics as they are not able to fulfil the grocery demand. There is a lot of demand but companies are not ready to deliver.”

Covid-19 impact: Amazon won’t require sellers to repay loans until April 30

Merchants of popular items from toys to apparel have worried that the temporary ban on stocking goods in Amazon warehouses

Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday said it temporarily would not require sellers in its marketplace to repay loans it had made to them, as merchants confront the prospect of declining sales during the coronavirus pandemic. The world’s largest online retailer notified sellers that its programme known as Amazon Lending would pause repayments beginning Thursday until April 30. Interest would not accrue during that period, it said.

The programme has offered sums between $1,000 (846.5 pounds) and $750,000 to merchants looking for capital to acquire inventory, expand their product lines and advertise on Amazon. “Loan repayments will restart on May 1, 2020 … You will have the same number of remaining payments once repayment resumes,” Amazon said in a seller message obtained by Reuters.

More than 20,000 merchants have gotten loans from Amazon, the company said in 2017. By the end of 2019, Amazon stood to receive $863 million from sellers to whom it provided financing through the lending program, according to a company filing. The loans’ terms range from three to 12 months, carrying interest rates from 6 per cent to 19.9 per cent.

ALSO READ: Covid-19 impact: Amazon temporarily suspends sale of non-essentials

As Americans turn to online shopping while quarantined, many online sellers, who are small and medium-sized businesses, are facing cash flow constraints amid supply chain and logistics issues caused by the outbreak. EBay Inc , another major online marketplace, said on Wednesday it will defer most selling fees for merchants for 30 days.

Jeff Bezos teams up with Narayana Murthy to enter India’s food delivery biz

Amazon’s entry in the food delivery business comes at a time when Zomato and Swiggy have started cutting back on discounts

Amazon is all set to start its food delivery business in India from Bengaluru next month, says a news report in The Economic Times. The launch of the service, which would be offered as part of either Amazon’s Prime Now or Amazon Fresh platform, could happen as soon as next month. With this, Amazon will take on estabished players such as Zomato and Swiggy.

Executives at two restaurants, who did not want to be named, confirmed that Prione Business Services, a joint venture between Infosys cofounder NR Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures and Amazon India, has been signing contracts with brands to list on Amazon, offering 10-15% commissions, the report said. The report points out the e-commerce giant had already started pilot testing its service in select parts of Bengaluru, and by March, it will be rolling out to other parts of the country, says a news report in Dainik Bhaskar

Amazon’s entry into the food delivery market would create new challenges for Prosus Ventures -backed Swiggy, and Zomato, a 10-year-old startup that acquired Uber’s Eats business in India for about $180 million in January. Amazon’s entry in the food delivery business comes at a time when Zomato and Swiggy have started cutting back on discounts. Last month, Bezos told the audience at an Amazon event in New Delhi that the company plans to invest $1 billion in India.

Realme C3 review: Good performance overall, but camera disappoints

This smartphone could be a good option for those looking for a performer, but if you are looking for Instagram-worthy pictures, you might not be impressed

Technology News: After launching several smartphones last year, Chinese smartphone brand Realme is continuing to bring more smartphones to the Indian market. After the Realme 5i, the company has brought the Realme C3, aimed at those who love to binge-watch movies and web series.

The Realme C3 comes with some notable software and hardware upgrades over the Realme C2, including MediaTek’s Helio G70 Processor chipset and a 5,000-mAh battery. In the first impression, we felt the smartphone was worthy of some praise but we couldn’t just do that at its face value, so we used the phone for a few days and here is what we found:

Design and display

The phone’s textured back panel is a deviation from the usual gradient design we see in most smartphones these days. Apart from that, the phone is lightweight, despite a 5, 000mAh battery. The power and volume buttons are on the right and left sides, respectively. But they are very sleek, hence a bit difficult to locate. The phone has a tray for two Nano-SIMs and a microSD card. There are a Micro-USB port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a loudspeaker at the conventional bottom position. Despite 195g weight, the Realme C3 feels light. The phone is available in Frozen Blue and Blazing Red colour options. When it comes to display, the smartphone has a 6.5-inch LCD screen with 1,600 x 720 pixel resolution, 20:9 aspect ratio, and 89.8 percent screen-to-body ratio. The screen has Gorilla Glass 3 protection.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos pledges $10 billion fund to tackle climate change

Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet,’ says Bezos, whose net worth is estimated to be around $130 billion

His company is often criticized for its environmental record, but Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world’s richest man, said he was committing $10 billion to a new fund to tackle climate change. In a post to his 1.4 million followers on Instagram on Monday, the e-commerce tycoon said the Bezos Earth Fund would “fund scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.”

“Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet,” said Bezos, whose net worth is estimated to be around $130 billion. Hundreds of Amazon employees last month signed a blog criticizing the online retail giant’s climate policies and demanding it do more to tackle climate change. Amazon has been accused of creating vast amounts of waste from the packaging it uses for doorstep deliveries, as well as for the greenhouse gas emissions from huge fleets of vehicles.

The company, which in December said its workforce had hit 750,000, has also been denounced over its carbon footprint because of the high energy consumption of its server farms for its lucrative cloud computing activities. “I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share,” Bezos said in his announcement on Monday…

US court grants Amazon motion for pause in Microsoft’s Pentagon deal

The Pentagon, which had planned to start work on the contract on Friday, said it was disappointed in the ruling.

A US judge on Thursday granted Amazon.com Inc’s request to temporarily halt the US Department of Defense and Microsoft Corp from moving forward on an up-to-$10 billion (£8 billion) cloud computing deal that Amazon says reflected undue influence by President Donald Trump.

Amazon, which had been seen as a front-runner to win the contract, filed a lawsuit in November just weeks after the contract was awarded to Microsoft. Trump has publicly derided Amazon head Jeff Bezos and repeatedly criticized the company. Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith issued a preliminary injunction but did not release her written opinion. She also ordered Amazon to post $42 million in the event the injunction was issued wrongfully.

The Amazon lawsuit said the Defense Department’s decision was full of “egregious errors,” which were a result of “improper pressure from President Donald Trump, who launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks” to steer the contract away from Amazon “to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos. Bezos also owns the Washington Post, whose coverage has been critical of Trump and which has frequently been a target of barbs by Trump about the news media…

Walt Disney’s weapon against Netflix and Amazon in India: Hotstar

Hotstar reported 300 million monthly active users last year

When Walt Disney Co’s Disney+ streaming service makes its debut in India on March 29, it will enjoy the luxury of home-court advantage: Hotstar. Disney’s control of Hotstar, which it acquired through the $71 billion purchase of Twenty-First Century Fox in 2019, gives Disney+’s entrance into the Indian market in partnership with Hotstar hundreds of millions of potential subscribers it can attract.

Hotstar reported 300 million monthly active users last year. Most of these are users of the free, advertising-supported service and Disney has said it is aiming to convert many of these users into paying subscribers. Disney could use the help as the streaming video war is waged on the global stage this year against rivals Netflix Inc and Amazon.com Inc. India is widely viewed as one of the biggest source of new subscribers.

Hotstar’s paid service includes shows from a spectrum of international programmers including AT&T Inc’s HBO, whose offerings include “Game of Thrones” and “Chernobyl” as well as popular live sports content like Premier League soccer. Disney+ Hotstar, will have two tiers of pricing where the premium variant will include its original programming like “Star Wars” TV series “The Mandalorian” and “WandaVision” and “Loki” from Marvel…

Amazon not doing India a favour by investing billion dollars: Piyush Goyal

Minister’s remarks come a day after Bezos announced $1 billion investment

Amazon is not doing India a favour by investing a billion dollars, said Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce and Industry, a day after the e-commerce giant’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced the incremental investment in the country.

Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue 2020, an annual event organised by the Observer Research Foundation, Goyal said on Thursday, “they may have put in a billion dollars but then if they make a loss of a billion dollars every year, then they jolly well have to finance those billion dollars. So it’s not as if they’re doing a great favour to India when they invest a billion dollars.”

Bezos, considered the richest man in the world with a net worth of $117 billion, is in India for the first edition of his firm’s micro, small and medium enterprises focused event — Amazon Smbhav. In New Delhi, he announced the investment of $1 billion, in addition to the $5 billion Amazon has invested over the past five years.

The latest round of investment will go towards digitising 10 million MSME businesses in India, and help such firms export $10 billion worth of “Make in India” goods by 2025 through its platform. However, Goyal was clearly not pleased with the announcement. Talking about the losses incurred by Amazon’s marketplace, he added that if the company was bringing in money “largely to finance its losses”, which amount to $1-1.5 billion a year at a turnover of $10 billion, then it raises the question of how the losses occurred.

Ahead of Jeff Bezos visit, Amazon pumps in Rs 1,715 crore into India units

Fresh investment comes at a time when CCI has ordered an investigation against Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart on complaints of deep discounting practices and tie-ups with preferred sellers

Ahead of Jeff Bezos’ visit, the world’s largest online retailer Amazon.com Inc has stepped up its investment in India. The Seattle-headquartered firm has pumped in a total investment of Rs 1,715 crore into its digital payments arm Amazon Pay (India) Pvt Ltd and Amazon Wholesale (India) Pvt Ltd.

The funding is expected to help Amazon tap India’s booming digital payments market, compete with Walmart-owned PhonePe, Alibaba-backed Paytm, and Google’s mobile payment service Google Pay. The funding would also help it to take on its rival Flipkart with whom the company is in a fierce battle for dominance in India’s online retail market.

Amazon Pay (India) allotted 135.50 crore equity shares of Rs 10 each aggregating to Rs 1,355.00 crore at par on rights basis to the existing shareholders of the company, according to the regulatory documents filed by Amazon, which were sourced from business signals platform Paper.vc. Also, Amazon Wholesale (India) Pvt. Ltd., allotted 36 crore equity shares of Rs 10 each aggregating to Rs 360 crore to the same existing shareholders of the firm on rights basis. The resolution for this capital infusion was passed by the board of directors of both the entities from December 30-31, 2019..

Thousands trapped on Australia beaches as bushfire leaves no escape by land

Australia’s remarkable bushfires have been consuming for a considerable length of time, yet the most recent in a progression of heatwaves and high breezes have fashioned new destruction

A great many holidaymakers and local people had to escape to sea shores in fire-desolated southeast Australia Tuesday, as blasts tore through well known visitor territories leaving no way out via land. 4,000 individuals were caught on the foreshore of the town of Mallacoota and numerous others looked for shelter on sea shores in fire-surrounded ocean side towns here and there a 200-kilometer (135-mile) segment of coast.

A few inhabitants with vessels even took to the ocean, seeking after shelter from one the most noticeably terrible days yet in Australia‘s months-long bushfire emergency. Many properties were dreaded to have been crushed since late Monday and in any event seven individuals were unaccounted for in New South Wales and Victoria states as flares arrived at well-populated towns like Batemans Bay.

In certain spots the blasts were so exceptional, the smoke so thick and the fire-incited dry lightning storms so extreme that aeronautical observation and waterbombing must be ended, the New South Wales Rural Fire Service said. In Mallacoota, smoke went day to night and the specialists said close by flames were causing outrageous tempests and “coal assaults”. “We have a fire that resembles it’s going to affect on Mallacoota,” Victoria’s Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp told open supporter ABC, including that firemen had been conveyed to ensure the gathering…

Amazon challenges Pentagon’s $10-billion cloud deal with Microsoft

The 10-year contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program will see all military branches sharing information in a system boosted by artificial intelligence

Amazon has challenged the awarding of a USD 10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract to Microsoft, alleging “unmistakable bias” in the process.

The 10-year contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program, better known as JEDI, ultimately will see all military branches sharing information in a system boosted by artificial intelligence. “It’s critical for our country that the government and its elected leaders administer procurements objectively and in a manner that is free from political influence,” a spokesperson for Amazon Web Services said on Thursday.

“Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias.” Amazon said it filed a notice in US court last week signaling its intent to protest the handling of the bidding process. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Amazon and company founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. The newspaper is among US media outlets most critical in its coverage of Trump and his administration.

The president told reporters during a news conference in July that he had asked aides to investigate the JEDI contract, citing complaints from companies that compete with Amazon. “I’m getting tremendous complaints about the contract with the Pentagon and with Amazon. … They’re saying it wasn’t competitively bid,” Trump said. “Some of the greatest companies in the world are complaining about it, having to do with Amazon and the Department of Defense, and I will be asking them to look at it very closely to see what’s going on.”

Amazon found selling clothes from factories other retailers blacklist

After a deadly 2013 factory collapse, most big US apparel companies agreed to steer clear of dangerous plants in Bangladesh. Not Amazon.

After a 2013 factory collapse killed more than 1,100 people in Bangladesh, most of the biggest U.S. apparel retailers joined safety-monitoring groups that required them to stop selling clothing from factories that violated certain safety standards. Amazon.com Inc. didn’t join. According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, the site today offers a steady stream of clothing from dozens of Bangladeshi factories that most leading retailers have said are too dangerous to allow into their supply chains.

A yellow gingham toddler top embroidered with flowers was among those clothes, listed on Amazon for $4.99 by a New York City retailer. The Journal traced the top to a factory in Chittagong, Bangladesh, that has no fire alarms and where doors are of a type managers can lock and keep workers in. A laborer at the factory, 18-year-old Nasreen Begum, said she spends 12-hour days there stitching shirts with 300 others. “You’re trapped inside until the time you complete the orders,” she said.

The Journal found other apparel on Amazon made in Bangladeshi factories whose owners have refused to fix safety problems identified by two safety-monitoring groups, such as crumbling buildings, broken alarms, and missing sprinklers and fire barriers. U.S. retailers such as Walmart Inc., Target Corp. , Costco Wholesale Corp. and Gap Inc. have agreed to honor bans imposed by those two groups, to have their supply chains inspected and to disclose to the groups the factories that supply them.

The Journal found clothing including pants, sweaters, clerical robes, fishnet body stockings and other items, that originate from blacklisted factories and end up on Amazon. Amazon has become a major player in apparel, a force with which other retailers must compete in a market where customers often seek the lowest price. It may have overtaken Walmart last year as Amer

Govt probing Flipkart, Amazon over alleged predatory pricing: Piyush Goyal

CAIT had in a letter on Monday urged Goyal to order an audit into the business model of all e-commerce firms

The government is probing Wal- Mart-owned Flipkart and Amazon over the alleged predatory pricing, commerce minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday. Warning of stringent action as per the law for any violation, he said detailed questionnaires have been sent to these companies and their response is awaited. According to media reports, the e-commerce majors have grossed up over $3 billion in gross merchandise value during the festive sales held over the past fortnight, which typically see over half of their annual sales.

“E-commerce companies have no right to offer discounts or adopt predatory prices. Selling products cheaper and resulting the retail sector to incur losses is not allowed,” Goyal told reporters. They are also not permitted to own products and sell them, he said and that they are only platforms helping sellers connect with potential buyers. Without specifying the exact transgressions, Goyal said his ministry has received complaints from the traders body CAIT alleging violations of norms by these players.

“A detailed questionnaire has been sent to them. Today or tomorrow, a supplementary questionnaire will also be sent,” he said and reminded that he had earlier also warned these e- commerce players. “We will take stringent action against them, if there is violation of any law in letter or in spirit. The law is clear. Action will be taken as per the law,” he said….

Malaysian PM Mahathir accepts failure of the boom he launched 30 years ago

While Vision 2020 was always more rhetoric than reality, it did serve to harness Malaysia to the climate of the times

Mahathir Mohamad has walked away from one of the big intellectual drivers of his decades at Malaysia’s helm: The idea that the former commodity-dependent backwater could be transformed into a fully developed country by 2020. It’s vital for the Southeast Asian nation’s future that the right lessons be learned from this letdown.

The prime minister conceded last weekend that Vision 2020, his demanding scheme to propel Malaysia to an industrial powerhouse, has failed. Launched in 1991, the plan became shorthand for the rapid development that characterized much of Asia during that decade. Mahathir Mohamad effectively just closed the book on an economic era. For this, he is to be applauded, overdue though such an acknowledgment was.

While Vision 2020 was always more rhetoric than reality, it did serve to harness Malaysia to the climate of the times. Globalization was in its glory days, elaborate supply chains were built throughout the region, and foreign investment poured in. Living standards and education attainment rose, Japan was Asia’s big commercial power and the end of the Cold War made Western-style economic and political opening seem like natural law. I even believed it myself during my tenure in Kuala Lumpur before witnessing the devastation wrought by the Asian financial crisis. Not that Mahathir saw the West as necessarily the best template. He often favored Japan and its model of post-war industrialization, which inspired a signature approach that he dubbed, “Look East.”

My mother had me when she was 17: Jeff Bezos testifies before US Congress

Amazon founder and CEO talks about personal life and narrates the difficulties the company faced in initial years of its existence

International News: Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, spoke about his personal life and narrated the difficulties his company faced in its initial years when he testified before the US Congress. “I’m Jeff Bezos. I founded ‘Amazon’ 26 years ago with the long-term mission of making it Earth’s most customer-centric company. My mom, Jackie, had me when she was a 17-year-old high school student in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Being pregnant in high school was not popular in Albuquerque in 1964. It was difficult for her,” he said in his testimony before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law .

The world’s richest man said that when the school tried to kick out his mother, his grandfather went to bat for her. “After some negotiation, the principal said, “OK, she can stay and finish high school, but she can’t do any extracurricular activities, and she can’t have a locker.” My grandfather took the deal, and my mother finished high school, though she wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage with her classmates to get her diploma,” he said. He further revealed that determined to keep up with her education, she enrolled in night school, picking classes led by professors who would let her bring an infant to class.

‘My dad’s name is Miguel’

“She would show up with two duffel bags–one full of textbooks, and one packed with diapers, bottles, and anything that would keep me interested and quiet for a few minutes. My dad’s name is Miguel. He adopted me when I was four years old,” said the Amazon CEO. “He was 16 when he came to the United States from Cuba as part of Operation Pedro Pan, shortly after Castro took over. My dad arrived in America alone. His parents felt he’d be safer here. His mom imagined America would be cold, so she made him a jacket sewn entirely out of cleaning cloths, the only material they had on hand,” added Bezos. “We still have that jacket; it hangs in my parents’ dining room.”