Alibaba and Amazon look to go global

IN SEPTEMBER 2014 Jeff Bezos announced his first big investment in India, hopping aboard a colourful bus in Bangalore. It was the start of a rapid $5bn investment in India, part of Mr Bezos’s plans to take Amazon global. Two months later Alibaba’s Jack Ma appeared in Delhi. “We will invest more in India,” he declared. The following year Alibaba put $500m into Paytm, an Indian digital-payments company. This year it led a fundraising round for Paytm’s e-commerce arm. The two giants seem set for an epic clash in India.

But in their home markets they have so far stayed out of each other’s way. Amazon has only a tiny business in China. Alibaba’s strategy in the United States has been to help American businesses sell in China and vice versa. “People always ask me, when will you go to the US?” says Alibaba’s CEO, Mr Zhang. “And I say, why the US? Amazon did a fantastic job.” The two firms have mostly invested in different foreign markets: Alibaba across South-East Asia and Amazon across Europe. But much of the rest of the world is still up for grabs.