Until I moved to Bengaluru last year from my small hometown in Kerala (or village, if your bar for town is high), Amazon was the place where I shopped online. Delivery was reliable, there was an incredible amount of choice, finding what you wanted was easy, and the odd recommendation that popped up was useful. 

But since my move, I’ve noticed that the frequency of my orders on Amazon has slowed. Not because I buy less frequently online—in reality, the breadth and scale of my online purchases have increased by a scary amount. Bengaluru, however, is the bastion of quick-commerce, and I admit I’m among the many who have fallen for the convenience. 

So when we started recording our Two by Two episode for this week, and hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar sat down with our guests, I already had a thought or two about the subject at hand. 

Is Amazon really past its peak in India? 

Well, its position certainly isn’t as strong as it once was—it’s lost e-commerce market share to Flipkart, and Meesho is threatening its tier-2 and tier-3 markets quite effectively. 

And quick-commerce… well, quick-commerce is coming for everyone. 

But the conversation we ended up recording ranged far wider, and deeper, than just Amazon’s fortunes in e-commerce. And a large part of that is due to the insight and experience our two guests brought to the table. 

First, there was Professor Vishal Karungulam, who teaches a broad range of subjects at the Indian School of Business (ISB), including software product management, digital innovation, and disruptive technologies. He is also one of those rare academics who’s worked at companies such as Google and Microsoft, where he built cloud and analytics products.

Second was Srikanth Rajagopalan, CEO of Perfios Account Aggregation Services. Srikanth, who was also a guest on the very first episode of Two by Two, has served in a number of roles at major companies, including Nokia, Amex, and most pertinently for us, Amazon. 

Both of them brought to bear unique perspectives on not just Amazon’s position in e-commerce, but the things it can take advantage of elsewhere.