In this interview, a senior Amazon India leader recounts the 2013 launch of Amazon’s marketplace in India after a regulatory shift barred online retailing. The team pivoted from a retailer model to a marketplace within four months, guided by three core principles: (1) prioritize seller quality over quantity, using prospecting, mystery‑shopping, and tiered difficulty tests to onboard a small, high‑performing seller set; (2) adopt a customer‑wins‑always dispute policy, instantly refunding buyers, placing both buyer and seller on watchlists, and avoiding internal debates; and (3) focus on operational inputs rather than revenue, monitoring weekly business reviews (WBRs) that track selection breadth, order defect rate (ODR), and the flywheel effect. These practices built early customer trust, differentiated Amazon from competitors, and illustrate Amazon’s systematic, principle‑driven approach to running a marketplace.
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So when I joined Amazon India, this was way back in 2013, we were supposed to launch in as a retailer in the country and then the government rolls in a requirement saying that no longer retailers are allowed, online retailers are allowed because that might just eat up the small and medium businesses. So you can only be a marketplace. So we scrambled to launch a marketplace in 4 months flat in India, and that was backbreaking work. But what I realized about Amazon, and at the same time there were other competitors who were also kind of pivoting the business model from retailers to that of a marketplace and launching it, but what was incredible about Amazon is the principled approach that we took to the market. So I'll give you an example. So one of the principles that we talked about was quality of sellers is more important than quantity of sellers. That's kind of the launch principle that we had. So the way we went about the launch was we ended up doing prospecting sellers and we did mystery shopping on them. We kind of shipped their items in 3 different places, easy to receive, medium medium hard to receive, hard to receive. We scored them and then we onboarded the sellers onto the platform. The flip side of this was it's— I mean, the hard— the flip side of this approach was that you couldn't onboard too many sellers because it's like time intensive, effort intensive. But you know that you had quality sellers on your platform when you launched. And so while the competitors focused on quantity of sellers, we were just going with a handful of sellers in a selected category, and that's how we launched. What's incredible was after our launch, the kind of customer trust that we gained with the seller's performance was way ahead of how competitors used to perform, where let's say you ordered for a phone and you will receive a brick instead because e-commerce was just fledgling at that point in time. Indian sellers were not very tuned to e-commerce. So that was one interesting approach that Amazon took, which has always stayed with me. very clear principles in how we manage systems. The second thing I recall is also that I think it's the second day of operations or third day of operations, so one of the customers calls up and complains that, hey, I bought a DSLR camera from you and then in this DSLR package I don't have the lens, I've just got the body in here. And what's incredible about that company again is how principle-driven they are. So when there's a dispute between a customer and seller, customer wins, period. I think that solved for countless decisions and meetings that would have transpired if it was another company. So what we decided is we refunded the customer, we put them on a watch list, we put the seller on a watch list, and the business moved on. I think that company is a well-oiled machine when it comes to principles, and there's tons to learn from Amazon when it comes to how do you run marketplaces. The Yeah, the third and the most important thing about Amazon is also about the focus on inputs of the business. Everybody knows the flywheel that is very famous, and it's incredible to sit on what you call as the WBRs, which is their weekly business reviews, and see that there's no mention of revenue whatsoever. All they're focusing on is, do you have the right selection? At that point in time, we used to call this ODR. Is your order defect rate under control? So I think that's an incredible way of measuring the performance of the business. So that's Amazon for me.
