Jeff Bezos And Masayoshi Son Both Want To Win India's E-Commerce Market

Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN has already made it clear he wants to conquer the Indian e-commerce market. But he isn't the only billionaire businessman looking to do so. Japan's Masayoshi Son is also eyeing the very lucrative and very young market.

Son, the founder and CEO of SoftBank, is close to finalizing a deal that would combine Snapdeal, an Indian e-commerce platform in which it is the largest investor with a competing online company called Flipkart Online Services. In fact, Son is even willing to cut Snapdeal's valuation by 85 percent to $1 billion so that the merger can be finalized.

The combination of Snapdeal and Flipkart is described as being an arranged marriage and Son is the matchmaker. Son and his company are willing to inject another $500 million to $1 billion if the merger finalizes.

Son's Game Plan

The Bloomberg report noted that Son was an early backer of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd BABA and helped Alibaba defeat eBay in the Chinese market. As such, he has the necessary experience in helping a local e-commerce company take on the much larger American rival.

Son is now looking to do the same in India and believes the combination of Snapdeal and Flipkart will create a big enough empire to battle Bezos and Amazon for the control of the world's fastest growing online retail market. It has yet to be seen if the market is the biggest.

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This India ETF Is Soaring ________ Image Credit: Masayoshi Son and Nobi Hayashi, By Danny Choo - http://www.flickr.com/photos/dannychoo/5579247280/, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons