E-commerce giant Amazon has acquired social commerce platform GlowRoad, which is backed by venture capital firms such as Accel and Vertex Ventures, a person familiar with the development told VCCircle.
The transaction involves an all cash deal and has paved the way for the exit of the investors, the person said without providing further details.
The acquisition relaunches Amazon in the social commerce space, putting it in direct competition with its rival Flipkart's social commerce app Shopsy, and Meesho.
Earlier, Amazon had launched its social commerce platform, Spark, in India in 2018 after a year it rolled out in the US. However, it shut down Spark in 2019.
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the development while email queries sent to GlowRoad did not elicit an immediate response.
"This acquisition will complement GlowRoad’s already loved service with Amazon’s technology, infrastructure, and digital payments capabilities, bringing more efficiency and cost-saving for everyone. This is a step further in Amazon’s commitment to digitize 10 million local Indian businesses by 2025," the spokesperson said.
In another major acquisition in the social commerce space, Glance, part of mobile-advertising company InMobi and owner of short-video platform Roposo, bought Kalaari Capital-backed Shop101 in June last year.
Meanwhile, other social commerce platforms have attracted signiicant funding.
In April 2021, Meesho raised $300 million in a new funding round led by SoftBank. This investment round turned Meesho into a unicorn, or a privately-held startup with a valuation of at least $1 billion. Few months later, it raised another $570 million led by Fidelity Management & Research, and B Capital Group, catapulting the Bengaluru-based startup’s valuation to $4.9 billion from $2.2 billion in April.
Last month, Cmunity Innovations Pvt Ltd, which runs online retail platform Citymall, secured Series C funding of $75 million led by Norwest Venture Partners.
GlowRoad, run by Bengaluru-based Accelerator Enterprise Pvt. Ltd, was formerly called LocalQueen.com. The portal was acqui-hired by Sonal Verma, a doctor by qualification, and her team in June 2017 and rebranded as GlowRoad.
In its last funding round in November 2020, GlowRoad raised $7 million from a clutch of existing investors -- Accel Vertex Ventures, and the IND Fund. This came 18 months after the Bengaluru-based company secured $11.5 million (around Rs 80 crore) in an extended Series B round of funding from investors including Korea Investment Partners (KIP) and Vertex Ventures. Previously, it had raised $10 million led by Chinese alternative asset management firm CDH Investments. It had first snagged $2 million in Series A funding from Accel in September 2017.
