BENGALURU: Amazon buys the 76 percent stake in the investment company Catamaran from NR Narayana Murthy in Prione Business Services. The latter operates Cloudtail, the largest seller in the Amazon India marketplace with sales of over Rs.16,600 billion in FY 2021. It is also Amazon’s arm helping bring third-party providers to its platform.
Amazon already holds the remaining 24% of the shares in Prione. It will now completely own Prions. The companies did not provide any information about the value of the transaction.
Indian law prohibits a marketplace operator from being a seller on the platform. Amazon cannot operate Cloudtail on its own platform. Amazon didn’t say what its plans for Cloudtail are. Retail sources said they would try to split Cloudtail’s business between several other vendors. It’s not clear how much time regulators gave Amazon to complete this process.
On Wednesday, Amazon and Catamaran announced in a joint statement that Amazon’s acquisition of the stake in Amazon must be approved by the authorities. Amazon is said to have obtained the approval of the competition commission for this. In August, the two companies announced their decision to end their seven-year partnership, which is due to be extended in May 2022. The latest joint statement states that the joint venture’s operations will continue under the guidance of current management.
Amazon now has a million sellers on its platform, most of them small and medium-sized businesses and half of them from tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Prione has played a vital role in bringing these sellers on Amazon.