According to information from an Indian business insights platform Paper.vc, Amazon is investing a fresh $630 million (Rs. 4,472 crore) into three of its Indian subsidiaries – Amazon Pay, Amazon Retail, and Amazon Sellers, media reported Wednesday.
The information is reflected in filings with the Registrar of Companies under India's federal Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
While Pay is Amazon’s digital payment app, Amazon Retail operates similar to large big box stores. Amazon Seller, for its part, helps business-owners manage and analyse sales of their products on Amazon marketplace on-the-go.
Reports suggest that the largest chunk of the investment -- $478 million (Rs. 3,400 crore) will go to Amazon Seller Services.
Amazon Pay and Amazon Retail services in India will receive $126 million (Rs. 900 crore) and $24 million (Rs. 172 crore) respectively.
As per Paper.vc, Amazon’s heavy investments in India come despite cumulative losses nearly touching $1 billion filed in the company’s annual financials.
Recently, India-based e-commerce player Flipkart -- majority-owned by Amazon’s arch-rival Walmart -- also decided to invest nearly $352 million (Rs. 2,500 crore) in its businesses in the country, while also aiming to bag a food license.
The competition between the two commercial giants is speculated as being one of the reasons why Amazon announced fresh investments in India.
The distribution of Amazon’s investment plans evidently shows that the US-based company aims to deepen its penetration into all of its businesses in India.
At a time when the US and China are busy in their trade feud, global players have been looking to India as a potentially profitable market to expand.
Earlier in September, Amazon rolled out the capability of speaking and understanding Hindi to its digital assistant Alexa in India -- where nearly 50 percent of the country's 1.37 billion people understand and communicate in Hindi.
However, the company's retail arm has of late been mired in legal trouble after the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), which advocates for small traders and businesses in India, accused the company of engaging traffic on their websites using unethical means like deep discounting.
