Amazon to invest Rs 115 crore into it's Indian wholesale vertical

Amazon is going all guns blazing in India to expand its pie share in the Indian e-commerce ecosystem. The US-based etailer has committed to pump in another $17.25 million (or Rs. 115 crores) in its wholesale arm — Amazon Wholesale (India), according to a report in Economics Times.

Amazon Wholesale, set up in the year 2013, runs the business portal of the company and also acts as a seller of exclusive products, including smartphones for Amazon India portal.

The fresh funding which takes the total capital raised by the wholesale unit now to Rs. 155 crore comes in the backdrop of Alibaba’s growing aggression to provide a B2B offering in India.

The company’s wholesale arm which is currently serving small and medium-sized business(SMBs) in just Bengaluru and Mangaluru now also plays a critical role as a source of high-volume products like smartphones for merchants on its online marketplace as Amazon India has been cutting down smartphone sales routed through its merchant's arm Cloudtail in order to comply with the new government norms. The new norms cap single seller on a marketplace at 25 percent of total sales.

Reports suggest that the company has directed device makers to bill the proceedings to Amazon Wholesale (India), instead of billing products and inventory directly to Cloudtail which has also increased the requirement of working capital for the wholesale unit.

Amazon Business currently accounts for more than 10,000 sellers in Bengaluru, as per an official statement.

In June 2016, Amazon announced that it would infuse $3 billion in India in the next few years to take on its rivals. In July, it launched its biggest Fulfillment Centre in Sonipat near New Delhi.

The Seattle-based company is also in a race to acquire digital broadcasting rights of Indian Premier League (IPL), in order to boost its Prime subscriber's userbase.