With $1 billion in a year, team India is just fabulous: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos

September 29, 2014

Amazons Bezos

Bangalore, Sep 29: India has surpassed the highest expectations for Amazon, the company's founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said, promising to keep the money tap open for a business that he announced has sold goods worth more than $1 billion (Rs 6,000 crore) in just over a year of operations.

"We had very high expectations and this team has blown past our highest expectations... It's going extraordinarily well," said Bezos, 50, who is making his second visit to India and his first after Amazon launched its India retail business in June 2013. "The results are very good. Now that's why we are doubling down our investments... If there is an opportunity to invest more, we will. We are not capital-constrained, we are ideas-constrained he said.

In July, Bezos committed to invest $2 billion in India, just a day after India's biggest online retailer Flipkart announced $1 billion in funding, setting the stage for a battle for top honours in a market that retail advisory Technopak expects to be worth $32 billion (Rs 1.9 lakh crore) by 2020.

With an estimated net worth of $30 billion, Bezos is one of the world's richest men and India is crucial to his plans for Amazon, given the country's size and potential, and especially since it has failed to make much headway in China.

Unfazed by Alibaba

His company launched relatively late in this country. Amazon's share price has fallen by around 20% on the Nasdaq this year, and China's Alibaba is flush with cash after its IPO and ready to challenge Bezos around the world, including India. But Bezos, who swears by the credo of long-term thinking, is unfazed.

"Judging just based on results, I would say we have come exactly at the right time," Bezos said in response to a question about whether he has left India until too late, and let out a full-throated guffaw, one of several that punctuated the 40-minute interview.

Amazon's main rivals in India are Bangalore-based Flipkart and Snapdeal, the Delhi-based company that counts eBay, Azim Premji and Ratan Tata as investors. Together, they have sold goods worth more than $4 billion, with Flipkart alone estimated to have crossed $2 billion. Alibaba, too, is keen on India, and the Chinese company has the money, experience and ambition to succeed here.

Does Alibaba's $25-billion IPO earlier this month put Bezos under added pressure? "If so, I haven't felt it," he said, bellowing once again with laughter and reiterating his focus on good business results over the long term.

Asked what was his message for Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal of Flipkart (both former employees of Amazon India) especially after it appeared to have tauntingly welcomed him with giant billboards across Bangalore, including one outside the Sheraton hotel where he is staying, announcing its upcoming 'Big Billion Day' sale, Bezos refused to be drawn to speak about competition.

"I have this long-standing practice about not talking about other companies. We have a somewhat unusual or rather unique approach of mostly ignoring our competitors," he said.

With revenue of nearly $75 billion in 2013 and a market value of $150 billion, Amazon is best-known as an online retailer. But it also runs a fastgrowing cloud computing business called Amazon Web Services and makes Kindle tablets and Fire smartphones. Bezos, in his personal capacity, bought The Washington Post newspaper last year. In India, Amazon started its technology operation first and employs a total of about 12,000 staff at offices in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Delhi.

Dressed casually in beige trousers and a light blue shirt, Bezos was unstinting in his praise for country head Amit Agarwal, whose team has made sure that India is the fastest country to reach $1 billion in gross sales for Amazon. "He is going to blush because I am going to say so many good things," Bezos at the start of the interview said about his former technical advisor at Seattle headquarters.

Some of the innovations by the India operation are being exported to the rest of the world, Bezos said, pointing to its 'Easy Ship' service of delivering goods for sellers who don't stock their products with Amazon.

"I am super excited," he said. Traditionally, Amazon has grown organically but it is open to acquisitions in India, Bezos said, as he spoke of the Indian operation along with AWS, Kindle and fashion as the company's new frontiers. "Mostly we grow organically and that's true in India. But if there are opportunities to do acquisitions, we'll always consider."

Asked whether India's marketplace-based e-retailing model was a bother - Amazon operates an inventory-based model at home - Bezos said his company had no issues whatsoever, dispelling a perception that the Indian system was an irritant and he would lobby with the government during this visit to change it. "Our marketplace model is working phenomenally well... I always tell my team that whatever the rules are, we are the ones who would have to adapt to the local rules," he said.

Some five years ago, Bezos made a quiet two-week visit to India, allocating the first half of his trip for business and rest for leisure. The father of four took his nine-year-old son to the main tourist attractions, including the Taj Mahal in Agra and Varanasi, a city now represented in the Lok Sabha by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"I find India and the people not just energetic but personally energising," he said.

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Agencies
January 12,2020

Washington D.C., Jan 12: A recent study has claimed that people end up wasting almost an entire day when they take a vacation.

This can happen while standing in a queue or searching for places to visit, people do not keep a count of the time they have actually utilised during the trip. As a result, they end up doing much lesser activities than they originally had planned.

According to a recent report in Fox News, the study has also shared the fact that people try to justify time waste with planning and scheduling activities whereas the truth is that these things can be done well ahead to save time during the trip.

The average time waste according to the study commissioned by Sykes Holiday Cottages also said the people taking a seven days' trip waste a minimum of 17-and-a-half hours to figure out various factors.

But there are other causes involved as well. When one visits any crowded location, the real-time spent to enjoy the location is lesser than the time spent on reaching and trying to get involved. For instance, if one visits an amusement park, the activities take lesser time than the preparatory and other phases.

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Agencies
January 4,2020

Washington D.C: One of the greatest spectacles of modern art is still thriving in the Australian outback as confirmed by satellite imagery of NASA. The Marree Man is a massive geoglyph depicting an aboriginal hunter, that spans over 2.6 miles in the Southern Australian region.

Discovered by a pilot in 1998, its origin still remains a mystery even to this date.

The Marree Man was given a new lease of life in 2016 when a group of people from the neighboring town of Marree plowed its lines to avert its fading due to erosion.

After NASA shared the image of the art-work that was taken in June, the efforts of the good samaritans turned out to be a total success, reported CNN Travel.

The restoration team believes that the refurbished Marree Man would last longer than its original version.

According to NASA, "They [the team] created wind grooves, designed to trap water and encourage the growth of vegetation. They hope that eventually, the man will turn green."

In a previous article, CNN reported that an entrepreneur by the name of Dick Smith took upon himself to unravel the geoglyph's mystery in 2016. His team combed through all the available evidence but couldn't find anything conclusive.

In 2018 he even offered a 5,000 Australian dollar reward for anyone who knows the identity of its creator.

Nobody turned up with an answer but it was speculated that unknown artist lives in Alice Springs or even might be an American.

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Agencies
March 13,2020

Amid the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), which has infected 73 people in India and killed more than 4,500 individuals globally, doctors have advised that in addition to regularly washing hands, one should also disinfect their smartphone every 90 minutes with alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Ravi Shekhar Jha, Head of Department at Fortis Escorts Hospital in Faridabad said the best method to disinfect your smartphone is to use regular doctor spirit or the alcohol-based hand sanitizer at least every 90 minutes.

"Avoid touching your eyes, mouth, or nose. The best option is to use a phone cover or a Bluetooth device and try to touch your phone as less as possible. We would also recommend cleaning your phone at least twice a day," Jha told IANS.

According to research, published in 2018 by Insurance2Go, a gadget insurance provider, revealed that smartphone screens have three times more germs than a toilet seat.

One in 20 smartphone users was found to clean their phones less than every six months, said the study.

"In the time of fear of coronavirus, smartphones should also be disinfected with alcohol-based sanitizer rub. Pour few drops of sanitizer on a tiny clean cotton pad and rub it safely on your entire phone," said Jyoti Mutta, Senior Consultant, Microbiology, Sri Balaji Action Medical Institute in New Delhi.

"You can repeat this process every evening coming back home after an entire day out at work and once in the morning before going out," Mutta added.

"Maintain basic cleanliness, and try to avoid using other's phones especially if suffering from respiratory illness or flu-like symptoms as there is no other way to disinfect these regular gadgets," she stressed.

Another study from the University of Surrey in the UK, also found that the home button on your smartphone may be harbouring millions of bacteria - some even harmful.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus as a global pandemic on Wednesday. The death toll of COVID-19 has crossed the 4,500 marks and confirmed cases globally have touched one lakh as per the reports.

According to Suranjeet Chatterjee, Senior Consultant in Internal Medicine Department of Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals in New Delhi, "We should frequently wash our hands, cover our coughs and it is important to adapt to other good hygiene habits that are most important in such a situation."

"Coronavirus and other germs can live on surfaces like glass, metal or plastics and phones are bacteria-ridden. It is necessary that we sanitize our hands frequently and make sure that our hands are clean all the time," Chatterjee told IANS.

"The emphasis should be laid on sanitising our hands rather than sanitizing the phone - once in a while the phone can be sanitized under the guidance of the makers of the phone," Chatterjee stressed.

According to the global health agency, the most effective way to protect yourself against coronavirus is by frequently cleaning of your hands with alcohol-based hand rub or washing them with soap and water.

The WHO's report showed the virus infects people of all ages, among which older people and those with underlying medical conditions are at a higher risk of getting infected.

People should eat only well-cooked food, avoid spitting in public, and avoid close contact, the WHO said, adding that it is important for people to seek medical care at the earliest if they become sick.

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