winning marketshare in india is one of amazons biggest challenges right now it hit 1 billion in sales there faster than it has in any other geography but continues to face huge hurdles and growing competition amit agarwal who leads amazons india efforts told jay greene at the seattle times that the company has had to completely rethink its international expansion strategy part of that is building up a team of cowboys and jeff bots who can move incredibly fast and improvise ways to work with indias sometimeshaphazard infrastructure agarwal recalls to greene that when jeff bezos first saw his original plan to win marketshare in india after it entered the country in 2013 he thought it seemed too methodical and precise i dont need computer scientists in india bezos told agarwal i need cowboys amazons india employees need to be willing to dive into uncharted waters they need to come up with creative ideas and be unafraid of untested execution methods its important for us to not think like computer scientists in a very methodical thorough precise way but to think like cowboys where were not afraid to take risks where were not afraid to fire and then aim agarwal says if an employee comes to him and says that they cant do something because of some constraint agarwal will tell that person to go put their cowboy hat on and figure out a way to work around the problem for example amazon cant simply work with a postal carrier to ship goods to households from its giant fulfillment centers like it does with ups in the united states in part because of crazy traffic and a vague address system instead amazon has had to build a bunch of spreadout microwarehouses that ship goods to smaller distribution centers where packages are then either whisked off by motorcycledriving deliverypeople or dropped off in bundles at local stores where customers can pick them up the company has also had to build a system for allowing people to pay cash upon delivery instead of by card when they order online because thats how many indians prefer or require it besides being cowboys amazon indias employees should be jeff bots according to agarwal they need to be able to act fast and with confidence the key he believes is to create an army of jeff bots workers who have so absorbed bezos business philosophy codified in amazons 14 leadership principles such as have backbone disagree and commit and insist on the highest standards that they can enact it without hesitation we are all jeff bots at least i am kumar said last year amazon invested 2 billion in inida but the company hopes the colossal effort will reap even bigger rewards indias ecommerce market is so attractive to amazon is because its growing like crazy right now it has the third greatest number of internet users in the world after china and the united states and is similarly ranked in smartphone