Jeff Bezos to step down, hand over Amazon reins to cloud chief Andy Jassy

The announcement ends a long-running question about who would succeed the world’s second-richest person at the company’s helm

Amazon.com Inc on Tuesday said founder Jeff Bezos would step down as CEO and become executive chairman, as the company reported a third consecutive record profit and quarterly sales above $100 billion for the first time. This summer, Bezos, 57, will hand the keys of the world’s largest online retailer to Andy Jassy, head of its cloud computing division. The announcement ends a long-running question about who would succeed the world’s second-richest person at the company’s helm.

Jassy, 53, joined Amazon in 1997 after Harvard Business School, founding Amazon Web Services (AWS) and growing it to a cloud platform used by millions, the company’s website said. He had been a clear contender for the top job since Amazon created two CEO roles reporting to Bezos, the other held by recently retired consumer CEO Jeff Wilke. Tom Johnson, chief transformation officer at Mindshare Worldwide, said Jassy’s promotion underscored the importance of web services to Amazon’s future. “Jassy’s background in steering AWS shows just how top of mind those services are to Amazon’s business strategy. It’ll be interesting to see how that affects their strategy and balancing that priority with a growing ad business and the commerce behemoth,” he said.

Jassy is known for understanding technical details, and he has regularly taken jabs at legacy player Oracle Corp and cloud rival Microsoft Corp, which AWS continues to exceed in sales. Under Jassy’s leadership, Amazon’s cloud business has signed major customers including Verizon, McDonald’s and Honeywell. The division’s quarterly revenue consistently rose by double digits, helping cement its position as the market leader.

Amazon offers to help US with vaccine in letter to President Biden

The world’s largest online retailer has an agreement with a healthcare provider to administer vaccines at its facilities, Dave Clark, chief executive of Amazon’s worldwide consumer business said

Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday offered to help with the United States’ efforts involving the Covid-19 vaccine, according to a letter addressed to President Joe Biden, seen by Reuters. The world’s largest online retailer has an agreement with a healthcare provider to administer vaccines at its facilities, Dave Clark, chief executive of Amazon’s worldwide consumer business, said in the letter. He added, “We are prepared to leverage our operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts.”..

Reliance-Future deal gets Sebi nod, BSE ‘no-adverse-observation’ status

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) allowed the deal with some riders, five months after it was announced last August

Market regulator SEBI gave a go-ahead on Wednesday to Future Group’s scheme of arrangement and sale of assets to Reliance, based on which the Bombay Stock Exchange also granted its “no adverse observation” report to the Rs 24,713-crore deal. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) allowed the deal with some riders, five months after it was announced last August.

ALSO READ: Delhi HC rules Amazon’s attempt to control Future violative of FEMA FDI

The SEBI has said the litigation pending before the Delhi High Court and arbitration proceedings by the global e-commerce major Amazon contesting the deal should be specifically mentioned by Future Group while seeking shareholders or the National Company Law Tribunal approval, the BSE stated in its observation letter. It has also held that SEBI’s go-ahead on the draft scheme of arrangement would be subject to the outcome of these proceedings.

Ambani vs Bezos: A $3.4 bn battle for a pole position in Indian market

By seeking to stall Ambani’s purchase of Future, Bezos may be signaling that he would rather remain a rival

A vanilla commercial dispute is setting the stage for a clash between the world’s No. 1 and No. 6 richest men. But the legal wrangling is a sideshow. What Jeff Bezos and Mukesh Ambani are really fighting over is pole position in the only billion-plus-people consumer market available to both of them: India. The ostensible battleground is a $3.4 billion deal Indian tycoon Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. stitched up in August to acquire assets of debt-laden local retailer Future Group. Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. is trying to block the transaction.

That, in itself, is a bit of a dampener. Expectations were building for the two billionaires to work together. In September, Bloomberg News reported that Ambani had given Amazon an option to buy as much as 40% of Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd., seeking to repeat the success he had earlier this year in bringing in Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc. as partners to his digital platform. By seeking to stall Ambani’s purchase of Future, Bezos may be signaling that he would rather remain a rival. Or, that he’s buying time to sweeten the offer currently on the table.

Two Billionaires Fight Over a Billion Consumers

The actual quarrel is only interesting when you read between the lines of the claims and counterclaims.Amazon bought a 49% stake last year in a private firm controlled by Kishore Biyani, a pioneer of modern-format retailing in the country. The investment gave the U.S. e-commerce giant the right to acquire Biyani’s shares in the publicly traded Future Retail Ltd. from the third year. Another of Bezos’s conditions was that Biyani wouldn’t sell his assets — about 1,500 stores nationwide — to restricted persons, including Reliance, which operates India’s largest retail chain.

Festive sale: Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal add Rs 22,000 crore to cart

RedSeer said the first few days of this year’s online sale season saw a more explosive start compared to the last year- and is on track to meet its forecast of $4 billion by end of the event

E-commerce giants Amazon, Flipkart, and Snapdeal have witnessed blockbuster festive season sales. The pandemic accelerated the shift to e-commerce, with an increasing number of consumers shopping online at a higher frequency.

The online festive sales received a strong response from October 15-19. New estimates by RedSeer Consulting on Wednesday showed that $3.1 billion (Rs 22,000 crore) of goods were sold from brands and sellers in the first 4.5 days of the event. This means 77 per cent of RedSeer’s projected online sales were already achieved during the said timeframe. The firm had earlier projected total festive sales of e-commerce firms to cross $7 billion.

RedSeer said the first few days of this year’s online sale season saw a more explosive start compared to last year — and was on track to meet its forecast of $4 billion by end of the event. This would be a 50 per cent growth compared to the initial festive events hosted last year. Flipkart witnessed at least 40 per cent growth for its flagship festive sale Big Billion Days (BBD) compared to the same event last year, said people in the know. The Walmart-owned firm achieved its target in just three days of the week-long BBD, which ended on Wednesday. In just two days of the BBD, marketplace sellers witnessed the level of growth they had seen during six days of the event last year…Read More

My mother had me when she was 17: Jeff Bezos testifies before US Congress

Amazon founder and CEO talks about personal life and narrates the difficulties the company faced in initial years of its existence

International News: Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, spoke about his personal life and narrated the difficulties his company faced in its initial years when he testified before the US Congress. “I’m Jeff Bezos. I founded ‘Amazon’ 26 years ago with the long-term mission of making it Earth’s most customer-centric company. My mom, Jackie, had me when she was a 17-year-old high school student in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Being pregnant in high school was not popular in Albuquerque in 1964. It was difficult for her,” he said in his testimony before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law .

The world’s richest man said that when the school tried to kick out his mother, his grandfather went to bat for her. “After some negotiation, the principal said, “OK, she can stay and finish high school, but she can’t do any extracurricular activities, and she can’t have a locker.” My grandfather took the deal, and my mother finished high school, though she wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage with her classmates to get her diploma,” he said. He further revealed that determined to keep up with her education, she enrolled in night school, picking classes led by professors who would let her bring an infant to class.

‘My dad’s name is Miguel’

“She would show up with two duffel bags–one full of textbooks, and one packed with diapers, bottles, and anything that would keep me interested and quiet for a few minutes. My dad’s name is Miguel. He adopted me when I was four years old,” said the Amazon CEO. “He was 16 when he came to the United States from Cuba as part of Operation Pedro Pan, shortly after Castro took over. My dad arrived in America alone. His parents felt he’d be safer here. His mom imagined America would be cold, so she made him a jacket sewn entirely out of cleaning cloths, the only material they had on hand,” added Bezos. “We still have that jacket; it hangs in my parents’ dining room.”

Jeff Bezos teams up with Narayana Murthy to enter India’s food delivery biz

Amazon’s entry in the food delivery business comes at a time when Zomato and Swiggy have started cutting back on discounts

Amazon is all set to start its food delivery business in India from Bengaluru next month, says a news report in The Economic Times. The launch of the service, which would be offered as part of either Amazon’s Prime Now or Amazon Fresh platform, could happen as soon as next month. With this, Amazon will take on estabished players such as Zomato and Swiggy.

Executives at two restaurants, who did not want to be named, confirmed that Prione Business Services, a joint venture between Infosys cofounder NR Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures and Amazon India, has been signing contracts with brands to list on Amazon, offering 10-15% commissions, the report said. The report points out the e-commerce giant had already started pilot testing its service in select parts of Bengaluru, and by March, it will be rolling out to other parts of the country, says a news report in Dainik Bhaskar

Amazon’s entry into the food delivery market would create new challenges for Prosus Ventures -backed Swiggy, and Zomato, a 10-year-old startup that acquired Uber’s Eats business in India for about $180 million in January. Amazon’s entry in the food delivery business comes at a time when Zomato and Swiggy have started cutting back on discounts. Last month, Bezos told the audience at an Amazon event in New Delhi that the company plans to invest $1 billion in India.

Realme C3 review: Good performance overall, but camera disappoints

This smartphone could be a good option for those looking for a performer, but if you are looking for Instagram-worthy pictures, you might not be impressed

Technology News: After launching several smartphones last year, Chinese smartphone brand Realme is continuing to bring more smartphones to the Indian market. After the Realme 5i, the company has brought the Realme C3, aimed at those who love to binge-watch movies and web series.

The Realme C3 comes with some notable software and hardware upgrades over the Realme C2, including MediaTek’s Helio G70 Processor chipset and a 5,000-mAh battery. In the first impression, we felt the smartphone was worthy of some praise but we couldn’t just do that at its face value, so we used the phone for a few days and here is what we found:

Design and display

The phone’s textured back panel is a deviation from the usual gradient design we see in most smartphones these days. Apart from that, the phone is lightweight, despite a 5, 000mAh battery. The power and volume buttons are on the right and left sides, respectively. But they are very sleek, hence a bit difficult to locate. The phone has a tray for two Nano-SIMs and a microSD card. There are a Micro-USB port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a loudspeaker at the conventional bottom position. Despite 195g weight, the Realme C3 feels light. The phone is available in Frozen Blue and Blazing Red colour options. When it comes to display, the smartphone has a 6.5-inch LCD screen with 1,600 x 720 pixel resolution, 20:9 aspect ratio, and 89.8 percent screen-to-body ratio. The screen has Gorilla Glass 3 protection.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos pledges $10 billion fund to tackle climate change

Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet,’ says Bezos, whose net worth is estimated to be around $130 billion

His company is often criticized for its environmental record, but Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world’s richest man, said he was committing $10 billion to a new fund to tackle climate change. In a post to his 1.4 million followers on Instagram on Monday, the e-commerce tycoon said the Bezos Earth Fund would “fund scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.”

“Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet,” said Bezos, whose net worth is estimated to be around $130 billion. Hundreds of Amazon employees last month signed a blog criticizing the online retail giant’s climate policies and demanding it do more to tackle climate change. Amazon has been accused of creating vast amounts of waste from the packaging it uses for doorstep deliveries, as well as for the greenhouse gas emissions from huge fleets of vehicles.

The company, which in December said its workforce had hit 750,000, has also been denounced over its carbon footprint because of the high energy consumption of its server farms for its lucrative cloud computing activities. “I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share,” Bezos said in his announcement on Monday…

US court grants Amazon motion for pause in Microsoft’s Pentagon deal

The Pentagon, which had planned to start work on the contract on Friday, said it was disappointed in the ruling.

A US judge on Thursday granted Amazon.com Inc’s request to temporarily halt the US Department of Defense and Microsoft Corp from moving forward on an up-to-$10 billion (£8 billion) cloud computing deal that Amazon says reflected undue influence by President Donald Trump.

Amazon, which had been seen as a front-runner to win the contract, filed a lawsuit in November just weeks after the contract was awarded to Microsoft. Trump has publicly derided Amazon head Jeff Bezos and repeatedly criticized the company. Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith issued a preliminary injunction but did not release her written opinion. She also ordered Amazon to post $42 million in the event the injunction was issued wrongfully.

The Amazon lawsuit said the Defense Department’s decision was full of “egregious errors,” which were a result of “improper pressure from President Donald Trump, who launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks” to steer the contract away from Amazon “to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos. Bezos also owns the Washington Post, whose coverage has been critical of Trump and which has frequently been a target of barbs by Trump about the news media…