And the great Indian e-commerce war is back folks! Amazon, the global dominator in e-commerce space, and also the one fighting to get itself established in one of world’s fastest growing e-commerce markets, has invested a fresh $250 Million into its India operations, according to certain RoC filings unearthed by LiveMint.
As per the documents filed with Registrar of Companies, the fund was infused in December 2015, which is believed to be the single largest tranche of funds received by the Indian unit of the company since 2014 — the year when Bezos announced a staggering $2 Billion capital pumping into Amazon India.
Since July 2014, the company has received close to $840 Million, and these figures are as per the documents from RoC. During the same period, Flipkart and Snapdeal have raised $2.1 billion and $1.3 billion, respectively — making this an interesting fight, the one which involves massive amounts of money.
Amazon has been investing that $2 Billion in tranches — the current $250 Million being the latest of them all. About four months ago, Amazon invested $182 Million in Amazon Seller Services. Amazon India, since its launch in 2013, has been acquiring customers by offering lower product prices, wide range of products, and fast & reliable delivery.
The report also reveals that among all the eCommerce companies in India, Amazon spent the most amount on advertising and marketing for its brand. However, the company has been spending a lot of amount to build its network of supply chains as well — a model similar to the one it has followed elsewhere across the globe.
Amazon India grew three times in terms of logistics, to more than 2,100 cities and towns in 2015 and the company added eight warehouses last year, increasing the count to 21 Among every other eCommerce company out here in India, Amazon has the most number of warehouses and largest storage space in India. While Amazon has 21 warehouses Flipkart has 17.
In June quarter, Amazon’s sales—net of discounts, product returns and taxes—surged more than 300% compared with the year-ago period. In an email response to Mint, Amazon India spokesperson said,
We are very pleased with the growth momentum we are witnessing in India. At the end of Q3 2015 (July-September), we saw an approximate 500% year-on-year growth in volume, and in Q4 2015 (October-December) we sold more than we did in all of 2014. We are committed to investing aggressively with a long-term horizon and transform the way India buys and sells.
For Amazon, Indian is an important market, given that the company failed in China against local eCommerce giant – Alibaba, which is also increasing its footprints in India by virtue of its staggering investments in Snapdeal and PayTM.
It will be interesting to see which company stays at the pole position as the Indian eCommerce battle has now grown ahead of the funding figures and is more about user experience — which is again, a n area where Amazon has been faring slightly better than its Indian counterparts.
Flipkart recently made major changes to its senior management. It announced Binny Bansal as the Chief Executive Officer of the company while Sachin Bansal became the Executive Chairman of the company. This move from the company is believed to strengthen its management bandwidth to combat Amazon India and get ready for its IPO.
On the other hand, Snapdeal has strengthened its senior management team and even entered the logistics business by acquiring a larger stake in specialty logistics firm GoJavas in order to improve its speed of order deliveries.
