Amazon Wholesale India Pvt. Ltd, the business-to-business marketplace that operates Amazonbusiness.in, has received Rs 341 crore ($52.6 million) in funding from Singapore-based Amazon Corporate Holdings Pvt. Ltd, documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) reveal.
According to an RoC filing made on 5 July, the company received the funds through a board resolution passed on May 24. The wholesale entity had last received $15 million in December 2016.
Previous RoC filings show the wholesale marketplace also received fund infusion in September (Rs 159.9 crore) and June (Rs 115 crore) last year.
"We are focused on expanding our selection and...our vision is to build a place where businesses can discover anything they want to buy online,†an Amazon spokesperson said in response to an email query from VCCircle.
Only a day earlier, Amazon Seller Services Pvt. Ltd, the e-commerce major’s Indian arm handling seller operations, had received $260 million (Rs 1,680 crore) from Singapore-based Amazon Corporate Holdings Pvt. Ltd as well as the US-based parent company.
Amazon Wholesale India Pvt Limited was incorporated in 2013, the same year that Amazon entered India. However, the e-commerce major formally launched Amazonbusiness.in only in May 2015. The B2B wholesale marketplace specifically caters to small offices, entrepreneurs, department stores, kirana stores, drugstores, clinics, hospitals, hotels, and restaurants. Currently, Amazonbusiness.in is operational in 13 states across the country.
While Amazon has made no bones about its intent to capture the Indian e-commerce market, a tweet from Bezos in June only reaffirmed its stand. Bezos had said that India investments will keep growing. While announcing Amazon’s first-quarter results in April, Bezos had also deemed India as one of the company’s fastest-growing markets. In 2014, the company had invested $2 billion in its India operations and committed another $3 billion in June 2016, taking total investment in the country to $5 billion.
In a recent media interaction, Amazon India head Amit Aggarwal had claimed that the company reported 85% sales growth in the first quarter of 2017. The overall gross merchandise sale value had increased 68%. In comparison, Flipkart India Pvt. Ltd claimed to have clocked 45% growth in gross merchandise value in March.
The company’s Amazon Prime service, which bundles faster delivery, exclusive deals and unlimited access to its video library, seems to have brought in rich dividends with Prime customers accounting for close to 30% of all orders on the platform.
Besides, Amazon is also gearing up to launch a new digital payments service that will not be limited to transactions on its site. In May, the firm’s payments portal Amazon Pay (earlier Amazon Online Distribution Services Pvt Ltd) received Rs 67 crore ($10.46 million) from its Singapore-based arm Amazon Corporate Holdings Pvt Ltd and its US-based parent Amazon Inc.
The world’s biggest e-tailer will also continue to spend heavily on infrastructure and technology in India as it looks to tap into its next 100 million users. Amazon has so far set up 41 fulfilment centres in India, covering 13 million cubic feet.
