Amazon.com Inc. today opened its largest campus building globally in the south Indian city of Hyderabad as it prepares for a furious expansion and battle with nemesis Walmart Inc. in one of the world’s fastest-growing retail markets.

The Seattle-headquartered company is making an ambitious push in India, the last major retail frontier still primarily reliant on small-scale neighborhood and mom-and-pop stores. “E-commerce is so small in India relative to the total consumption, less than 3%,” said Amit Agarwal, Amazon’s country manager for India.





The largely untapped country is critical to the global domination plans of both Amazon and Walmart, the latter of which spent $16 billion last year to buy India’s biggest startup, retailer Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has so far pledged $5.5 billion for its India operations.

Built in Hyderabad over three years, the new campus is Amazon’s first owned building outside of the United States, spans 1.8 million square feet of office space, or about 50 times the footprint of the Taj Mahal’s mausoleum.

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