Months after Flipkart received a massive funding of $4 billion led by SoftBank, rival Amazon has pumped in Rs 2,900 crore into Amazon Seller Services. This is reportedly the single-largest infusion of funds into Amazon’s Indian unit, according to a report in Economic Times.
This is also Amazon’s third round of fund infusion into the Indian market this year, taking the total investments in Amazon Seller Services to Rs 17,840 crore ($2.6 billion). ET reports that this is over double of Flipkart’s Rs 8,349 crore investment into its marketplace.
As per a Mint report, regulatory filings with the Registrar of Companies show that Amazon India has issued paid up capital of Rs17,839 crore ($2.7 billion) towards its marketplace arm Amazon Seller Services so far. This is a lot more than the initial commitment of $2 billion in July 2014.
This only intensifies the battle between the ecommerce majors in India.
In a statement, Amazon India said, “As India’s largest and fastest growing e-commerce player, and with a long-term commitment to make e-commerce a habit for Indian customers, we continue to invest in the necessary technology and infrastructure to grow the entire ecosystem. We are delighted and humbled by the trust from our customers, to lead in India on things that matter to our customers in over four years of our business, while continuing to launch innovative India-first initiatives as well as completely new offerings like Echo, Prime and Prime Video.”
Amazon has been aggressively expanding its presence in India through additional offices, fulfilment and delivery centres and warehouses. It currently has 41 fulfilment centres across 13 cities in India.
It has also extended many of its services such as Prime Video, grocery delivery and audio streaming business in India, which have seen good traction in India. Its loyalty programme Prime too has seen great response, after which the ecommerce major hiked the price to Rs 999 a year.
“I think our investments are still squarely in the same three areas—how do we add more selection, how do we make it easier for sellers to offer more competitive prices and how do we build for faster deliveries... A layer on top of that is that we keep investing in Prime—so video, music, Echo, etc., are our key areas,” Amazon India head Amit Agarwal said in an interview on October 27.
This has prompted Flipkart to diversify into various categories to keep up with competition. It relaunched its grocery segment under ‘Supermart’. It is also eyeing big acquisitions to add new business segments and has been in talks with players such as Swiggy. It is also planning to reintroduce its loyalty program Flipkart First that it first launched in 2014.