Amazon shuts down product discovery platform Junglee.com

US-based online retail website Amazon has shut down product discovery platform Junglee.com. The online product discovery service has now been integrated into Amazon India and will henceforth be a part of Local Finds, a platform launched officially this July for customers to find and sell used and new goods.

Junglee was founded by former Amazon employees and Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs Anand Rajaraman, Venky Harinarayan, Rakesh Mathur and Ashish Gupta in 1996 and sold to Amazon for about $250 million two years later. It was launched formally in India in 2012 as an online shopping services platform.

Following the launch of Amazon India, Junglee started losing relevance in the e-commerce market of the country. In a bid to gain some much-needed transaction among customers, Junglee enabled direct purchases on its site for gadgets and books in May 2014.

A spokesperson for Amazon said, "We built the peer-to-peer shopping and selling experience through Junglee and integrated it into Amazon.in through Local Finds to offer a seamless shopping experience on a unified platform.”

While integrating Junglee with Local Finds could be seen as an extension of Amazon’s P2P push in India, the decision finally brings an end to Junglee’s journey as an independent entity.