(This story originally appeared in on Apr 26, 2016)

BENGALURU: In a sign of the success Amazon has had in India , its country managing director Amit Agarwal has been inducted into founder & CEO Jeff Bezos 's S-team, a set of senior (the S stands for senior) leaders who have a direct line to Bezos and play a crucial role in important decisions that the $107-billion e-commerce behemoth makes.In an email to select employees last week, Bezos said, "Please join me in welcoming Amit to S-team. Amit and our India team are doing remarkable things. Amit and his experience in India will be a key resource for all of us on S-team as we work to figure out what it is to be a true global company," he said.Confirming the development, Amazon India said, "Agarwal's inclusion in Amazon's S-team is a recognition of how excited the Amazon leadership is with our progress and how committed we are in delivering on our ambition to transform how India buys and sells."Under Agarwal's leadership, Amazon has captured a significant market share of India's e-commerce market in less than three years of commencing operations.In December last year, Amazon issued advertisements in leading newspapers in India saying Amazon.in had become the most visited e-commerce site in India (the web, not mobile apps).The claim was backed with data from ComScore that showed Amazon had seen 30 million unique visitors in October, ahead of rivals Flipkart (around 27 million), Jabong (around 21 million), and Snapdeal (around 18 million). The US online retail giant has also made significant strides on the mobile app, though it remains well behind Flipkart-Myntra on that platform.Agarwal has been instrumental in introducing local innovations like Amazon Now (formerly called Kirana Now) that brings local small stores online through its platform.Last year, it ran a programme called Amazon Chai Cart where mobile carts made their way into city's business districts, served tea, water and lemon juice to small business owners and taught them about selling online. It also launched Amazon Tatkal that equips small businesses to get online in less than 60 minutes with imaging and cataloguing services.India is Amazon's second biggest investment market, after the US, and the company has said it expects India to overtake Japan, Germany and the UK to become its largest overseas market in the next few years. In 2014, Bezos had pledged a $2 billion investment in India."CEOs and Boards of many global companies are keen to leverage the potential that India has and ensure they are overseeing the execution of business plans. This will also ensure that India based leadership teams will have direct access and support of people that matter," said Nitin Sethi, partner & chief commercial officer in Aon Hewitt Consulting. "Also, structurally, India in many cases is not part of a region but is a region by itself and that defines the reporting," he added.Sreedhar Prasad, partner - e-commerce & startups, in KPMG India, said Indian leaders of e-commerce companies need to be empowered in the organizational construct especially since India is considered a growth market for the organization."India is a country that doesn't have a common parallel and one-size-fits-all approach may not work because of its complexity. Global majors entering India today are relying on their Indian leaders to come up with a realistic road map for growth in India."Bezos's mail also noted that Agarwal's participation in the S-team would "necessarily" be through teleconference, indicating that his responsibilities in India may keep him from travelling to the US too frequently.