Amazon Seller Services gets fresh funding from US-based parent

Mumbai: Amazon.com Inc. infused Rs 1,460 crore (about $200 million) into one of its India units, Amazon Seller Services, during the crucial festive season.

Amazon Corporate Holdings Pvt. Ltd Singapore, and Amazon.com Inc. Ltd Mauritius made the investment, regulatory documents sourced by market intelligence firm Tofler showed. Amazon Seller Services operates the company's ecommerce marketplace that helps third party sellers hawk their products online in India and internationally. The board of directors of Amazon Seller Services passed the resolution at their meeting on Oct. 29, 2021.

A significant share of the funds came from Amazon Singapore.


Emails sent to Amazon India seeking comments on the funding remained unanswered.

The fresh capital will add to Amazon India’s warchest to compete better with rivals such as Flipkart’s Walmart, Reliance JioMart and Tata’s BigBasket. The company has been investing heavily in the country to expand its etail infrastructure and improve customer experience.

Amazon had in October infused Rs 1,000 crore into Amazon Pay India.

During the recently concluded festive season, Amazon saw more customers shopping on its platform “than ever before” with 79% of new users coming from Tier-II and Tier-III cities. Users from 99.7% of pin codes in India had shopped on the platform during its month-long festive season sale.

Amazon.in — which kickstarted its Great Indian Festival 2021 on Oct. 2 with Prime Early Access and went live for all customers on October 3 — said more than 10 lakh customers purchased a smartphone from the platform for the first time during the festive sale.

With inputs from PTI.