Amazon India (Amazon Seller Services Pvt. Ltd) has received a massive infusion of Rs 1950 crore to up its e-commerce game in India a notch higher, Registrar of Companies documents showed. The development was first reported by The Economic Times. The capital came in from its parent Amazon Inc. (US) and Amazon Singapore.
The investment comes two months after Amazon infused Rs 2900 crore in Amazon India. Note that, Amazon has a total investment commitment in India of $5 billion (approx Rs 32600 crore)- $3 billion the company committed in June last year, plus $2 billion investment announced back in July 2014, which the company has already exceeded. Following are some investments:
- It invested Rs 1,350 crore in its India unit, in June 2016.
- Invested Rs 115 crore in its wholesale business in India called Amazon Wholesale (India), in September 2016, which was set up in 2013 and runs the company’s B2B portal as well as acts as a distributor of exclusive products on Amazon India.
- Made a fresh investment of Rs 2010 crore into its India unit, in November 2016.
- The India unit’s payments arm Amazon Pay received funds worth Rs 67 crore in May 2017, followed by Rs 130 crore in July, and Rs 260 crore in October.
- Amazon India’s logistics arm received Rs 130 crore this month, which was the third tranche of funds infused into the logistics company in about a year after Rs 207 crore worth of funding in June this year, and Rs 67 crore in September 2016.
- Last month, it infused Rs 1620 crore in Amazon Seller Services through its Singapore and Mauritius subsidiaries, and before that, the unit received Rs 1680 crore in July.
Competition heats up for Flipkart
Its main rival, Flipkart has been too pumping in funds into different parts of its operations and trying to match up to Amazon’s funding power. In August last year, Flipkart raised funding to the tune of $2.5-2.6 billion from SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund, and $1.4 billion from Microsoft, eBay and Tencent in April. In October 2017, Flipkart committed $500 million in its payments am PhonePe, which is an addition to $75 million funds infusion Flipkart had made in PhonePe since acquiring it in 2015. And then it injected Rs 961.4 crore in Instakart Services Pvt. Ltd., which operates its logistics arm eKart.
