What Does India’s Coronavirus Lockdown Mean for Amazon and Walmart?
On March 24, India implemented a three-week lockdown for 1.3 billion people to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The decision was made after projections indicated that up to 500 million Indians could be infected by the end of July and overwhelm the country's 0.7 hospital beds per 1,000 people. The U.S., which is already buckling under the pandemic, has 2.9 beds per 1,000 people.
The abrupt lockdown disrupted services at the country's two largest e-commerce platforms, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) India and Walmart's (NYSE: WMT) Flipkart. Both companies temporarily paused deliveries and only accepted orders for "essential" household, food, safety, healthcare, and personal care products.
Amazon and Flipkart recently resumed deliveries in several cities after taking measures to protect their delivery workers and customers, but both companies are still operating at limited capacities. Let's see how the lockdown could impact both companies' plans for the world's second-most-populous country.
Source Fool.com