The corporate building located in the surrounding of glass and concrete building, as it is known as the Silicon Valley of Asia, Hyderabad, India, can hardly be distinguished. The latest development by Amazon, the online retailer’s largest office building in the world.

Making plans to establish its place as the center of gravity, where online retail revolves, Amazon is looking to India, which houses the market for the world’s rapidly growing internet users. Amazon has picked Hyderabad for the purpose, the city with 10 million population in the southern part of India, the operations’ hub of Amazon. Though there are challenges in executing this project due to local businesses pushback and political involvement. 

In just a few years, Hyderabad has evolved to be a technology and financial center and a talent magnet. This city witnessed the biggest rise in tech office space the previous year, and is already the base in India for different MNCs like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple, as these companies spent $25 million for developing the offices in this city.

Minari Shah, Amazon’s spokesperson, said, “Hyderabad is a known software tech talent center, and the government has been an enabler for us to have a campus this size. This is an important confirmation of how India continues to be important to Amazon.”

In the last decade, the technology innovation took the shape according to the Indian lifestyle. Within four years of the construction, the Hyderabad office of Amazon, which is the first office outside the United States for the company, joins large numbers - 40 other offices, 67 shipping centers, 1400 delivery stations, and a whopping 60,000 + 155,000 contractors in India.

Amazon’s new office has a record size – 1.8 million square feet and a total campus area which equals 65 football fields. Amazon’s initiative is a changing spear, a defining feature for the country’s fast-growing tech industry, the inevitable presence of international tech companies.

Jeff Bezos, the father of Amazon, visited India in the month of January, and met with an antitrust case by Indian regulators, which are investigating Amazon and the Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart. Walmart owns a large share of Flipkart.

Foreign Direct Investment in retail is banned by India, which is a policy shift from the United States and Britain. As per law, Amazon and other firms like e-commerce, which are foreign-owned need to be neutral marketplaces depending on independent sellers. However, Praveen Khandelwal, the founder and general secretary of the Confederation of All India Traders, overseeing 70 million traders and 40,000 trade associations, pitches argument that the firm has hurt domestic trade, which has resulted to the closure of thousands of homegrown businesses countrywide.

“The new office in Hyderabad of Amazon is just a way to “Push for Control and Dominance over the Indian Retail in a more structured way,” said Khandelwal. He leads the protest against Amazon’s trade practices this year.

“Investigating the allegations on Amazon, India’s retail regulator is using deep discounts and preferred sellers,” said Satish Meena, Senior Analyst, Global Technology, Forrester. Meena said, “There are loopholes they’re exploiting; everyone knows that.”

The United States is experiencing the challenges that are emerging in India, where American tech giants have squeezed smaller rivals and business owners. Encountering antitrust challenges in the European Union, Amazon and the founder, Bezos, along with tech titans were suffocated by the U.S. lawmakers in the last month because of their practices.

The 15-story office in Hyderabad was opened last year, which comprises prayer rooms, a small synthetic cricket pitch, 49 elevators, a helipad and a cafeteria serving 24 hours a day. Amazon claims that it is made of 2.5 times more steel than the famous Eiffel Tower. This is home to 7,000 employees where it expects a workforce of 15,000, involving technology teams, who are instilled and centered working with machine learning and software development for innovative services like Amazon Pay’s Cash Load Services for digital transactions in a country having 190 million citizens, which neither use banks nor use customer service workers.

Amazon representatives moved away from commenting on the development cost, but stated to Bloomberg that it spent hundreds of millions of dollars on building this. This is Amazon’s largest campus, however, it plans to second headquarter in Arlington, Va., and it could be as large as eight million square feet.

Both Amazon and Flipkart showcase themselves as e-commerce marketplaces, matching buyers with independent sellers, which gave Amazon the power to sell products by sellers like Cloudtail, at lower prices compared to independent sellers.

The impact caused by Amazon’s strategy is noted and in the past two years, Satinder Wadhwa had struggled to manage his business alive in Greater Kailash, South Delhi, despite the growth of online retailing. Satinder’s specialty is watch store, Time & Style, which stayed filled with local champs. Now, Wadha says he is getting only half of the numbers.

He said, “People have stopped coming to the market; that means they’re buying online. If they’re getting a better price and delivery at home, why will they come to us? Amazon is financially strong, their reach is strong,” said Wadhwa. This is a question asked by many business owners.

In 2016, the Hyderabad office construction started, where Amazon promised the locals with attractive deals. Amazon started ‘Amazon Fresh Store’ for grocery delivery in Bengaluru, started Prime Reading with books in Hindi and Tamil, and also introduced an online pharmacy despite the pandemic.

The retailing ace is looking to expand its e-commerce industry, which is still at the nascent stage in India, only 120 million online buyers in 2018 from a population of over one billion.

Amazon was the second-largest online retailer in India in 2018, with Flipkart in the first position, had a 32 percent market share, compared to 41 percent in the United States. Forrester analysts predict that e-commerce sales in the country will reach about $86 billion by 2024.