mumbai indias recent policy flipflop that hit ecommerce companies may have kicked in to ensure tighter compliance by some industry players who were not conforming with the rules amazon india chief amit agarwal saidthe online retailing behemoth would have preferred more consultations before the fdi rules were announced in december last year agarwal told et in an interview the piecemeal approach had the potential to hurt the fledgling industrys growth prospects he saidthe new regulations which took effect from february 1 mandated that online retailers with foreign capital could not sell products through companies in which they have an equity interest or push brands and merchants to sell exclusively on their platforms there has been a lot of conversation if this was the right policy for the ecommerce industry he said amazon was directly affected by the new norms as it had to restructure joint ventures with affiliated sellers such as cloudtail and appario retail we were compliant even with the new policy but some of our sellers felt the need to strengthen their compliance so they took off some of their selection for a period of 78 days but we are back and growing as healthy as before he said advt agarwal who was speaking on the policy tweaks for the first time since they were implemented said a small group of disgruntled and motivated voices were unfortunately making the most noise we want to ensure that the policy shouldnt slow down the industry instead it should be enabling sellers and removing friction on digital marketplaces he saidsix years after entering india amazon has seen more new users shop on its platform yearonyear he said the rate at which we are acquiring new customers continues to be as strong as it has ever been and is growing every year the conversion of settled customers into prime members and the engagement of prime customers into super prime customers is also growing agarwal said read alsoecommerce companies flipkart amazon log out of deep discountsindia needs enabling ecomm policyegrocer grofers picks up 220 million led by softbank vision fund india was still the fastestgrowing market globally for the web retailers popular paid membership programme prime even after 30 months of launch he said when i look at the next five years as we try to get to the next 100 million people to shop with us the first 100 million users will convert into prime customers he saidthe online retailer does not split its prime membership base countrywise but it said last year that globally the subscription service had surpassed the 100million mark amazon pay video music and pantry would get the push going ahead agarwal said with video emerging as a stronger part of engagement for prime than even shopping advt on the etailers offline push agarwal ruled out hiking amazons stake beyond the current 5 in shoppers stop the focus at the moment was to relist it online as it had to reorganise to comply with the new norms he