India Inc rolls out the red carpet for Bezos even as Modi govt shuns him

New Delhi: After the Narendra Modi-led Central government cold-shouldered Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, India Inc rolled out the red carpet for him in the country’s financial capital.

The who’s who of India Inc could seen in the picture with Bezos taken at the fabled staircase of iconic Taj Mahal, Mumbai which leads to the gigantic ball room on the left and the cavernous Sea Lounge on the right.

On the final day of his three-day trip to India, Bezos and Amazon held a roundtable with business leaders.

The business leaders who attended the meeting were a mix of business partners, FMCG companies, bankers and others. The list for people invited for the interaction included Reliance Industries Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani, Adi Godrej, Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel, Infosys’ former CEO N.R. Narayan Murthy.

Narayan Murthy is a business partner with Amazon as his Catamaran has a stake in Cloudtail, the largest seller on Amazon.

The others included CEO Infosys Salil Parekh, Kishore Biyani of Future Retail, which has recently done a tie-up with Amazon. BS Nagesh of Shopper’s Stop was also present with Amazon having recently acquired 5 per cent stake in it. The attendees also included former SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya and MakeMyTrip CEO Deep Kalra.

The FMCG biggies were present in full strength with Amazon being aggressive on the grocery and staples space. Sanjiv Mehta of Unilever, Suresh Narayan of Nestle, and Madhusudan Gopalan of Procter and Gamble were there.

Also, present were the bankers and financial services CEOs – Rajnish Kumar of SBI, Surendra Rosha of HSBC, Kaku Nakhate of Bank of America and Sanjiv Bajaj of Bajaj Finance.

No executive from Tata or Birla, however, attended the meeting.

The mobile phone partners were also in full strength with William Kim of Samsung, Pete Lau of One Plus, and Manu Jain of Xiaomi. Also present were Bhavish Agarwal of Ola, Ajay Bahl of AZB, Sumeet Narang of Samara Capital.

Senior Reliance group honcho Manoj Modi was also present at the Amazon round table.

IANS