Hailing India’s democracy, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said he predicts that the ’21st century going to be the Indian century’. ““The dynamism, the energy, the people are interested in self-improvement, in growth. This country has something special – it is democracy.”
He added that India and the United States — the world’s largest democracy and the world’s oldest democracy — would be the 21st century’s most important alliance.
Bezos was speaking at Amazon Smbhav event for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Delhi.
The e-commerce mogul announced doubling down on the company’s belief in India and promised to use its global footprint to export from the country. “We will invest $1 billion in digitising small and medium businesses and export $10 billion worth of ‘Make in India’ goods by 2025,” he stated.
Discussing Amazon’s plans for their Blue Origin space project, Bezos said he hoped it would reduce the cost of access to space. “Our descendants will eventually move all heavy industries and manufacturing into this space. We need to use other resources in the solar system. We need space entrepreneurs. We want Blue Origin to reduce the cost of access to space,” he said.
“We need a dynamic, entrepreneurial civilisation in space. We want it to be, so that two boys in a dorm room can start a space company,” Bezos said while talking about Amazon once being a small company itself.
He also spoke about climate change and stressed that as a big company, Amazon has pledged to comply with the Paris Accord goals 10-years ahead of the determined deadline. “Amazon will be 100 percent sustainable electricity user by 2030. We will eliminate usage of plastic in deliveries in India by June 2020,” he said.
He added that those not acknowledging that climate change as real ‘is not being reasonable’, a jibe at US President Donald Trump.
Bezos said that Amazon has already ordered 1,000 electric delivery vehicles and that its climate-pro decisions as a big company would have a “multiplier effect on associated companies, who will have to be sustainable for Amazon to be sustainable.”