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Jeff Bezos Vs Mukesh Ambani Is The Bout That Had To Happen
The battle for the Indian consumer was never going to be an all-American affair.
Walmart Inc.'s splashy acquisition last year of Flipkart Online Services Pvt., the homegrown e-tailer giving Amazon.com Inc. a solid run for its money, might have given the impression of a two-horse race. But as I argued (here and here), billionaire Mukesh Ambani wasn't going to watch from the sidelines.
And last week India's richest man jumped right into the fray. Ambani, chairman of the petrochemicals-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd., has a four-legged plan to connect India's 30 million small retailers with consumers. One, neighborhood marts will be connected to Reliance Retail Ltd.'s footprint of almost 10,000 stores, offering them common inventory-management, billing and tax platforms as well as low-cost payment terminals. That will give the expanded retail network formidable sourcing power.
The second hook is Ambani's telecom business. Consumer e-commerce in India is dominated by the urban middle class. Out of the country's 500 million Internet users, almost 200 million live in rural areas where one out of four goes online less than once a month. No wonder the number of online consumers, while growing rapidly, is expected to be only about 120 million this year. Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. alone has 280 million digital subscribers.
The ubiquity of Jio as a 4G telecom carrier, and the revolution it has unleashed in lowering data prices, means even shops in villages and semi-rural towns can now profitably transact with less affluent customers by using a hybrid offline-online model.
Third, Indians are watching almost 5 billion hours of video a month on their mobile phones and fiber broadband connections with Jio. That stickiness gives Ambani heft to promote private-label fashion, currently housed under the brand AJIO.
Finally, Ambani's ability to influence policies in his home market shouldn't be underestimated. Just as Reliance gets ready to push ahead, the Indian government has tweaked its e-commerce rules and made them more onerous for Amazon and Walmart-Flipkart. Until now, foreign retailers had found ways around a low that allows them to act only as pure marketplaces that don't stock their own inventories or offer discounts. Now that the loopholes are being plugged starting next month, Ambani is pitching the idea that Indians' shopping data should be stored locally.
Reliance Jio's digital investments have already exceeded $40 billion. But in India's hyper-competitive telecom market, the average revenue it can get from users isn't even $2 a month. One way to make a carriage- and content-centered business spew out profits is to make it a triple play by throwing commerce into the mix, and lacing it with good, old-fashioned lobbying.
The Indian government is forcing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to compete with one hand tied behind his back. He could still beat Ambani, but he won't be able to avoid getting bruised.
https://www.ndtv.com/business/jeff-bezos-vs-mukesh-ambani-is-the-bout-that-had-to-happen-1981255?pfrom=home-topstories
Japan may accept Russia peace pact if handover of 'realistic' two islands is secured
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is en route to Moscow for summit talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is leaning toward accepting a postwar peace treaty with Russia if Moscow hands over two of the four islands contested by the two countries, Japanese government sources said Sunday.
Abe, who is hoping to reach a broad agreement on the peace treaty issue later this year, said he wanted to take as much as time as possible to hold “candid” talks with Putin, as he left for Moscow on Monday afternoon.
The new approach now under consideration to settle the territorial dispute marks a departure from Tokyo’s long-held position of aiming for the return of all of the islands off Hokkaido, which the Soviet Union seized after Japan’s surrender in World War II in 1945.
The territorial dispute over the Russian-held islands off Hokkaido, called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia, has kept the two countries from signing a postwar peace deal.
“It is not realistic,” a senior government official said, referring to whether it is possible to persuade Russia to also hand over Etorofu and Kunashiri, two of the islands which account for 93 percent of the total area of the four in dispute.
Abe, who is looking to leave a diplomatic legacy by settling the long-running dispute, will hold his 25th summit with Putin in Moscow on Tuesday.
During a meeting in Singapore in November, Abe and Putin agreed to step up talks based on a 1956 joint declaration that states Shikotan and the Habomai islet group would be transferred to Japan by the Soviet Union following the conclusion of a postwar peace treaty.
The agreement between Abe and Putin drew speculation at the time that Abe would focus on the handover of Shikotan and the Habomai islet group before turning his focus to the two larger islands.
But a senior official close to Abe said, “There is no way that Mr. Putin would approve this” and suggested that the prime minister is becoming increasingly pessimistic about securing the transfer of the two smaller islands first and the rest later.
Abe seems to have accepted that continuing to call for the return of Etorofu and Kunashiri could stagnate the ongoing talks, and perhaps even dampen the prospect of the two smaller islands being transferred to Japan.
But he could face a backlash from his support base, with many Japanese deeming the new approach as giving up on Etorofu and Kunashiri — both of which the government has claimed to be an inherent part of Japan’s territory.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/01/21/national/politics-diplomacy/japan-may-accept-russia-peace-pact-realistic-handover-two-islands-secured-sources-say/
notable
i didn't know it had the necklace when first put up. anons told me. See where our heads are at!
original put up in sept? can't find it now. too many thumb drives and moving stuff around.
oh it was..no earthquake damage on homes before tsunami came in. There were 2 quakes in Sendai around 5-6mag which is nothing in japan and those were used to mask the detonation of nukes off-shore.
It's in the catalog