With the festive season right around the corner, the Seattle based e-commerce giant Amazon has invested $250 million (Rs. 1620 crores) in Amazon Seller Services, its India-based seller operations unit to cope up with the competition from Flipkart.
According to latest regulatory filings, documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) reveal that he investment was made through Amazon Singapore and Amazon Mauritius last month.
Flipkart emerged as a clear winner in terms of net sale during their festive season sales. Flipkart generated around Rs. 5000 crores as against Amazon’s sale of Rs 2500-3000 crores.
According to Greg Greeley, the head of Amazon Prime, India was one of the fastest growing markets for the prime membership. As compared to its first year of launch in the US, the number of memberships were more in India. Amazon introduced the very popular Prime subscription service in India in 2016. Recently, it announced that it is soon going to double the annual subscription fee to Rs 999. However, at Rs 999, it is still significantly cheaper than the US where it is priced at around Rs. 6000 per year.
Amazon has now fulfilled the commitment of its total investment of $5 billion in India. In the past two years, it has invested aggressively in various sectors like fashion, grocery and FMCG. A few months ago, the e-commerce behemoth invested $63 million in its logistics arm in India to expand its business operations.
Flipkart has also been investing heavily in a number of ventures. It has committed to investing fresh round of $500 million into the payments platform Phonepe. Flipkart has also invested in Ekart through its subsidiary Instakart Services Private Limited. It is also planning for a strategic partnership with movie and event ticket booking platform BookMyShow.
A recent report revealed that e-commerce companies in India will sell goods worth Rs. 3.3 billion during the Diwali festive online sales.