Amazon inaugurates its world largest campus in Hyderabad, can accommodate 15,000 employees
Hyderabad, Aug 21: US-based e-commerce giant Amazon on Wednesday inaugurated its new campus here - its largest facility globally - that will house 15,000 of its employees in India.
The campus building contains over 2.5 times more steel than the Eiffel Tower, measured by weight, and is spread over 9.5 acres of land.
With 15,000 work points across 1.8 million sq ft in office space, built on 3 million sq ft of construction area - this is Amazon's single largest building in the world in terms of total area, said Amazon Vice President of Global Real Estate and Facilities John Schoettler.
"We have eight buildings in Hyderabad with 4 million sq ft of office space. We are going to be migrating some of the employees out of some of those facilities (to the new campus). So far as of today, we moved around 4,500 to the (new campus). The building can hold - at any given point of time - 15,000 people," he told reporters here.
This is the only Amazon-owned campus outside the US. The move strengthens Amazon's focus on talent in India, where the company has over 62,000 full-time employees.
"It (Hyderabad campus) is also the largest technology base outside Seattle (Amazon's headquarters). The employees (in Hyderabad) include software development engineers, machine learning scientists, product managers, finance and many other functions," Amazon India Senior VP and Country Manager Amit Agarwal said.
Amazon had laid the foundation stone for the campus building on March 30, 2016. An average of 2,000 workers were on the site every day for 39 months to construct the building, spending 18 million man-hours.
The company, which is locked in an intense battle for market leadership in India with Walmart-owned Flipkart, has also focussed on sustainability while designing the new facility.
The campus has more than 300 trees dotting its grounds with three specimen trees aged over 200 years and has an 850,000-litre water recycling plant, Schoettler said.
Amazon has three fulfilment centres in Telangana offering more than 3.2 million cubic feet of storage space to sellers, two sort centres with one lakh sq ft of processing capacity and 90 delivery stations, a statement said.
Emphasising the company's commitment to the Indian market, Agarwal said it has already announced USD 5 billion investments in India, and another USD 500 million in food and retail.
"We continue to invest across all over businesses," he added.
He said the company has not seen a slowdown in its business in India.
"As far as our services go, we don't see any slowdown. There could be multiple reasons. I think one thing to keep in mind is that e-commerce is very, very small...it is probably just 3 per cent (of total retail). When you are that small, there is so much room to grow," he said.
Agarwal said the company had launched its Global Selling programme in India a few years ago that allows small and medium businesses in the country to sell to customers in other countries.
"What we have seen is while we have 500,000 sellers in the marketplace selling nationally, for exports already we have 50,000 signed up. We have 140 million items that are available on Amazon.com in the global marketplaces. The cumulative exports so far since launch has crossed USD 1 billion and in the next three years, it is expected to go 5 times to USD 5 billion," he said.
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Sunil Narine extends red hot form as KKR post 235/6 against LSG
Lucknow, May 5: Sunil Narine continued his explosive run in the IPL with an 81 off 38 balls, propelling Kolkata Knight Riders to 235 for six against hosts Lucknow Super Giants here on Sunday.
Proving his worth with the willow once again, the West Indian went on a six-hitting spree, blasting seven maximums and six fours.
The in-form Narine, who was dropped twice in the space of two balls, smoked five boundaries in five balls, setting the tone for the KKR innings.
First, he hammered back-to-back fours off Naveen-ul-Haq in the last two balls of the third over. He then attacked the offside, hitting three boundaries on the trot off Mohsin Khan in the fourth over.
Narine and Phil Salt (32) gave the two-time champions the explosive start they have come to expect from the duo. Together they put up a quick 61-run stand before Naveen-ul Haq took the pace off the ball to send the Englishman packing.
Medium pacer Yash Thakur then stemmed the flow of runs in the final over of the powerplay, giving away only two runs as KKR reached 70/1.
However, the unperturbed Narine continued his onslaught and brought up his fifty off 27 deliveries with a cheeky late dab that sent the ball rolling past short third.
He took a particular liking to Marcus Stoinis, sending the ball over the fence three times in the 11th over.
But Ravi Bishnoi, on whose bowling Narine was dropped twice before, was third time lucky as he put an end to the all-rounder's spectacular innings.
The LSG bowlers were able to rein in the KKR batters as they kept taking wickets.
Naveen-ul Haq got rid of Andre Russell (12) before Yudhvir Singh, who came as a concussion sub for Mohsin Khan, picked up young Angkrish Raghuvanshi's (32) wicket in the next over.
The Afghan pacer swung back into action to account for the big-hitting Rinku Singh (16) while Thakur removed Shreyas Iyer (23).
But Ramandeep Singh's unbeaten 25 off 6 balls took KKR past the 230-run mark.
