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.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Cong says LoPs not invited to Putin banquet, takes swipe at Tharoor for accepting invite
New Delhi (PTI): The Congress on Friday said Leaders of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi have not been invited to the banquet for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and took a swipe at its own MP Shashi Tharoor for accepting the invite.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said, "There has been speculation whether the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha have been invited for tonight's official dinner in honour of President Putin. The two LoPs have not been invited."
Congress' media and publicity department head Pawan Khera accused the government of breaking protocols daily and not believing in democratic principles.
"There is no invite to both the LoPs, Mr (Mallikarjun) Kharge and Mr (Rahul) Gandhi. This comes as a surprise but I don't think we should be surprised. This government is known to be breaching all protocols. What else to say, ask the government," he told PTI Videos on the sidelines of an event.
Asked about party MP Tharoor getting invited to the banquet and accepting the invitation, Khera said, "Ask Mr. Tharoor. All of us who are in the party, if our leaders don't get invited and we get invited, we need to question our own conscience and listen to our conscience. Politics has been played in inviting or not inviting people, which in itself is questionable and those who accept such an invite is also questionable," Khera said.
"We would have listened to our voice of conscience," he added.
Earlier, Tharoor said there was a time when the chairman of the external affairs committee was routinely invited but that practice seems to have stopped from some years.
"It has been resumed ...I have been invited, yes. I will definitely go," the chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs said.
On the LoPs reportedly not getting an invite, Tharoor said, "I don't know on what basis invitations were sent. I think the custom that usually used to be followed was for a wide representation. Certainly, I remember in the olden days, they used to invite not only the LoPs, (but) various other cross section of representatives of different parties. It conveys a good impression."
"I dont know the basis (of invitation), this is all done by the government, by the protocol by the Rashtrapati Bhawan, what do I know. All I can say I have honoured to have been invited. Of course I will go," Tharoor told reporters in the Parliament House complex.
Gandhi on Thursday had alleged that the government tells visiting foreign dignitaries not to meet the Leader of the Opposition due to its "insecurity".
His remarks had come hours ahead of Putin's two-day visit to India.
Gandhi had said it is a tradition that visiting foreign dignitaries meet the LoP but Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Ministry of External Affairs were not following this norm.
"Normally the tradition is that those who come from abroad have a meeting with the LoP. This used to happen during (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee ji's time, Manmohan Singh ji's time, it has been a tradition but what happens these days is that when foreign dignitaries come and when I go abroad, the government suggests to them to not meet the LoP," Gandhi had told reporters in Parliament House complex.
_vb_09.jpeg)
