Amazon propels Bezos to world’s richest man; thanks to COVID-19

Inside Tech Village
With Charles Lotara
Less than two weeks ago, a fairly-curated list of world’s richest men in the world was unveiled. Like it has always been, Americans dominated the list with renowned billionaires like Jack Ma, the founder of an eCommerce website Alibaba missing out. In this second edition of the column, I will not focus much on the credibility of the list but rather how some of the business tycoons scaled their ways to the top hierarchy of the wealthiest individuals on planet amid the coronavirus.
For years, Microsoft found Bill Gates has dominated the billionaire circle with his net worth ranging from $80billion to $90billion according to Forbes and Bloomberg Billionaire Index. But that was before the year 2020, that was before SARS-Cov-2 struck. With organizational furlough and the plummet of stocks, Bill Gates has seemingly failed to amass so much from his network of corporations to keep him on top of the game.
This year, Jeff Bezos, the founder of the world’s most reputable eCommerce website successfully dethroned Bill Gates. Many argue that Bill Gates would have not slipped to the second place to be trailed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk if he was not donating parts of his fortune to charity and philanthropic projects. That is not a compelling argument, however. When Gates maintained his position for years as the world’s richest, he was doing those projects. This is not a separate incident.
The truth is, COVID-19 has changed our world and the way businesses are done and the way companies are managed. In America where most death cases and cases of infection were reported, movements were restricted, which meant people would do shopping online; no news could more exciting than this for Amazon and Bezos.
Amazon has been the most trusted online shopping platform even before COVID-19 and that trust in the company has been ignited as citizens reeled under the discomfort of lockdown. Bezos, according to The Guardian, set a record for accruing $13billion in a single day in personal wealth.
Since January, Bezos who also owns Space X and The Washington Post saw his wealth growing to $74billion to leapfrog fellow billionaires within the index.
Americans and people around the world could have been buying from Alibaba, but that could have only happened if there was no trade war between the Trump administration and Xi Jinping of China. Also, Chinese companies are not reliable and are popular for delivering counterfeit products, things of platforms like AliExpress managed by Alibaba.
The coronavirus may be an alien among us for the worse. But aliens also teach us something new, something positive – this how COVID-19 is reshaping our world and transforming the financial landscape to the advantage of those in the information age and those willing to adjust.
Meanwhile, Bezos cannot afford to relax if he wants to maintain his position for as long as Gates did, thanks to the relentless team at Amazon doing a hundred experiments daily to establish innovations.
Otherwise, the threat to Bezos, for now, maybe Gates. However, Elon Musk, the maker of driverless and electric cars just hit a record high and made it to the top five for the first time and chances are tremendous that he could dethrone Zuckerberg as he seeks his way to the top.
As the coronavirus rages, online-based businesses, especially those in countries with better network infrastructure, capitalize on the demands of people under lockdown. Streaming service company Netflix did it, and so did Amazon. COVID-19 is here to stay, that will be for the benefit business technocrats like Bezos.