When Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon was inspired by Indian SMBs

In episode two of the series on Amazon Smbhav, Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon, speaks frankly about his company’s growth from a small business to a worldwide phenomenon. He was speaking at Smbhav, a two-day event by Amazon India for small and medium businesses (SMBs) held at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi on 15 and 16 of January, bringing together 3600 Indian SMBs.   Ecommerce in India is booming, with annual revenue growth of 51 percent. Some estimates claim it could add 500 million new users in the With that in mind, Bezos also announced that Amazon would digitise Indian SMBS, and also use its size and reach to sell their products worldwide.   Jeff Bezos sat down for a fireside chat with Amit Agarwal, Senior VP & Country Head of Amazon India. Bezos was at his charming best, saying, “I love India. Everytime I come here, I feel very alive. Yesterday, I had a chance to fly kites with a bunch of kids. That’s a good day!”   Dressed in a blue ethnic jacket, a gift to him by one of the attending SMBs, he said “It’s hard to remember, but 25 years ago, Amazon was a tiny little company. And you know, not only was I driving the packages to the post office myself, but I was wrapping them and, and preparing them and, you know, doing all the things that small entrepreneurs do.” Answering Amit’s question on why Amazon is the best place to experiment and fail at, Bezos said, “See if you know in advance that something is going to work, then it is not an experiment. So, you want to be doing many experiments per unit time, as many experiments per day, per week, per month, per year as you can because that’s how you get innovation. Innovation is all about maximizing the rate of experimentation. And so you have to organize to be able to experiment and you have to have a culture that supports failure. Amit and I together, we’ve been working together for two decades and I have failed together so many times and that is that is, it’s another way of learning.”