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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New Delh (PTI) The Congress on Saturday said it is perhaps not very surprising that India is not part of a US-led strategic initiative to build a secure silicon supply chain, given the "sharp downturn" in the Trump-Modi ties, and asserted that it would have been to "our advantage if we had been part of this group".
Congress general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the news of India not being part of the group comes after the PM had enthusiastically posted on social media about a telephone call with his "once-upon-a-time good friend and a recipient of many hugs in Ahmedabad, Houston, and Washington DC".
In a lengthy post on X, Ramesh said, "According to some news reports, the US has excluded India from a nine-nation initiative it has launched to reduce Chinese control on high-tech supply chains. The agreement is called Pax Silica, clearly as a counter to Pax Sinica. The nations included (for the moment at least) are the US, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia."
"Given the sharp downturn in the Trump-Modi ties since May 10th, 2025, it is perhaps not very surprising that India has not been included. Undoubtedly, it would have been to our advantage if we had been part of this group."
"This news comes a day after the PM had enthusiastically posted on his telephone call with his once-upon-a-time good friend and a recipient of many hugs in Ahmedabad, Houston, and Washington DC," the Congress leader asserted.
The new US-led strategic initiative, rooted in deep cooperation with trusted allies, has been launched to build a secure and innovation-driven silicon supply chain.
According to the US State Department, the initiative called 'Pax Silica' aims to reduce coercive dependencies, protect the materials and capabilities foundational to artificial intelligence (AI), and ensure aligned nations can develop and deploy transformative technologies at scale.
The initiative includes Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia. With the exception of India, all other QUAD countries -- Japan, Australia and the US -- are part of the new initiative.
New Delhi will host the India-AI Impact Summit 2026 on February 19-20, focusing on the principles of 'People, Planet, and Progress'. The summit, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the France AI Action Summit, will be the first-ever global AI summit hosted in the Global South.
Prime Minister Modi and US President Trump on Thursday discussed ways to sustain momentum in the bilateral economic partnership in a phone conversation amid signs of the two sides inching closer to firming up a much-awaited trade deal.
The phone call between the two leaders came on a day Indian and American negotiators concluded two-day talks on the proposed bilateral trade agreement that is expected to provide relief to India from the Trump administration's whopping 50 per cent tariffs on Indian goods.
In a social media post, Modi had described the conversation as "warm and engaging".
"We reviewed the progress in our bilateral relations and discussed regional and international developments. India and the US will continue to work together for global peace, stability and prosperity," Modi had said without making any reference to trade ties.
