World’s leading e-tailer Amazon has infused another ₹2,700 crores in Amazon India, as it gears up for battle against India’s leading e-commerce startup Flipkart, for the coming festival season.
Amazon Seller Services, the marketplace arm of Amazon India, received the funds, according to the regulatory filing with RoC, sourced from paper.vc.
So far, Amazon has pumped in over $1 billion since January, which includes ₹2,600 crores that were invested in May this year, along with ₹1,950 crores in January. This is part of Amazon’s commitment to invest at least $5 billion in India. With the latest investment, overall investment by Amazon in India has reached around $4 billion.
“Amazon would want to push aggressively this festive season and beat Flipkart on a standalone basis in terms of market share,” said Satish Meena, senior forecast analyst at Forrester. According to a recent Forrester data, Flipkart is leading the Indian market with a standalone market share of 31.9%, while Amazon has a market share of 31.1%.
Both the e-commerce giants, Amazon and Flipkart are constantly focussed on gaining more market share by increasing their sales through huge discounts and sales. Both these companies have prioritized sales growth over cutting losses and are yet to get anywhere close to profitability, according to analysts.
Recently, Flipkart officially launched its online grocery business ‘Flipkart Supermart’, as it looks to establish its grocery vertical. While Amazon has also invested ₹100 crores ($14 million) in Amazon Retail, to strengthen its food business in India. Amazon had also committed an additional $500 million for its food retail business in India.
According to an IBEF report, the Indian e-commerce market was worth $38.6 billion in 2017, and it is expected to grow to $200 billion by 2026. It is no surprise that these two e-commerce behemoths are engaged in a head-to-head battle to grab the biggest piece of this growing e-commerce market.