“We have 5 lakh micro entrepreneurs in India…That number has to grow 10 times the scale and would provide opportunity to another 4.5 million to 5 million,” he said.
Direct selling major Amway is betting big on the Indian market looking to scale up its business to Rs 20,000 crore in the long term having identified the country as one of its top three global priority markets along with the US and China, its global CEO Milind Pant said on Wednesday.
The company, which will be completing 25 years of operations in the country in the two years, believes it can scale up its business here much faster by ten times its current potential and would not take another 25 years to reach that.
“We have designated India as one of our top three priority markets in the world along with the US and China. So, we are very excited about the potential of India. It is one of our top three markets, for growth and for investment. We believe that the potential of India is huge,” Pant told PTI.
Explaining the rationale behind the company’s bullishness on India, he said the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated two trends — of people, particularly women and youth looking for micro entrepreneurship for supplemental income across the country, especially in smaller towns, and there is also an increased focus on holistic wellness, both of which augur well for Amway.
“From the foundation of the (nearly) last 25 years in India, it (Amway) is now in a place to combine these two trends of micro entrepreneurs providing these wellness solutions through the communities that they’re building. As we invest in those, we believe that is a massive potential for India,” Pant said.
He further said, “This is the conversation that we are having with the India team that how do we take the India business, which is a Rs 2,000 crore business today, to a Rs 20,000 crore business over the long term.” When asked how soon Amway can do it, Pant said, “I don’t believe it will take us 25 years to reach that…We’ve grown in 2020. We’ve grown in 2021 and we’re confident of growth in 2022 and beyond and before 25 years we will be Rs 20,000 crore.” Exuding confidence, he said, “Our India business has ten times the potential that it has and this can be benchmarked with any of our successful markets in Asia like Thailand or China or Korea, where our businesses have a similar amount of scale.” When the company scales up, Pant said the number of its partners will also grow exponentially in the long term.
“We have 5 lakh micro entrepreneurs in India…That number has to grow 10 times the scale and would provide opportunity to another 4.5 million to 5 million,” he said.
When asked about investments to achieve the scale, he said, “We have invested in India ahead of the curve and we will continue to invest in India ahead of the curve. We have recently invested in the midst of the pandemic and invested in four new R&D Labs in India across different Indian cities…” Amway had earlier committed Rs 1,000 crore investment in India, which includes Rs 600 crore towards manufacturing and Rs 170 crore in the next two to three years in the country to boost research and development (R&D), manufacturing automation and innovation.
Commenting on how Amway India has embraced digitisation in the wake of changing consumer behaviour induced by the pandemic, Pant said two years back there was a gap between US, China and India, especially between China and India on the level of digitisation but “today the gap is not material”.
Online sales in India has grown to 70 per cent of total sales at present from about 30 per cent two years back, he added.
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