Sumit Sahay, who was leading category management at Amazon, has now been roped in to be appointed as the Chief Executive Officer of Cloudtail, an online retailing joint venture between Amazon and Catamaran Venture.
Along with him, Madhu M, who was the CEO of Cloudtail, has now been handed over responsibilities of Sumit Sahay. He will now be the Director of Category Management at Amazon. So, basically this is just a swapping of roles within the company.
As per the regulatory filing, Sumit Sahay joined the board of Cloudtail last month. A spokesperson of Cloudtail has confirmed that Sumit is taking over as the CEO of Cloudtail, which is Amazon’s largest merchant. The spokesperson said,
Sumit will be responsible for driving the operations for Cloudtail. However, as a company policy we don’t divulge details on board members.
It is being said that Sahay’s experience of working across categories for the American e-tailer prompted the move by Cloudtail’s management to bring him on board as the CEO. Before taking the role as the director of category management, Sumit was looking after the home and kitchen business for the e-tailer.
Cloudtail was the leading merchant on the Amazon India platform, however, due to new government norms, which restricts single vendor’s contribution to 25 percent of the total sale on the platform, its contribution has decreased.
Initially, the retailer was largely dealing with electronics and mobiles but has recently pivoted its focus towards the company’s fashion and grocery products. Cloudtail reported revenues of Rs 4,591 crore for the year ending 31, March 2016, marking a four-fold increase.
A report from Economic Times, citing unnamed sources, says that “Cloudtail’s contribution to overall Amazon has decreased but it is nowhere close to the rules formed by the government last year.”
In 2014, Amazon Asia and Catamaran Ventures jointly formed Cloudtail India to sell items such as books, phones and exclusive merchandise on Amazon.in under the seller name, Cloudtail. Because of India’s foreign direct investment (FDI) rules, the e-tailer works as a marketplace, where it connects buyers with third-party sellers on its platform.
Amazon Seller Services, which represents the company’s marketplace arm in India, has posted a revenue of Rs 2,217 crore for the year ended March 2016, according to RoC documents.
