Amazon India’s anchor is crumbling as Cloudtail’s end nears

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Editor's note: Last week, on 9 August, Amazon announced that Prione Business Services, its seven-year-old joint venture with Narayana Murthy-owned Catamaran Ventures would be coming to an end. Their agreement was coming up for renewal on 19 May 2022, and the parties had decided not to renew.  From Amazon: “The two partners today announced they have mutually decided to not continue their joint venture beyond the end of its current term. The JV has enabled over 300,000 sellers and entrepreneurs to go online and enabled 4 million merchants with digital payment capabilities, providing these SMBs and merchants access to millions of customers across the country.” At The Morning Context, we believe that what has come to pass is perhaps the biggest disruption in India’s e-commerce landscape since Walmart acquired Flipkart.  Prione Business Services owns Cloudtail India Pvt. Ltd. Cloudtail is one of the largest sellers on Amazon India and accounts for more than 15% of e-commerce marketplace’s total transactions, according to company executives we spoke with. Cloudtail clocked Rs 20,000 crore in sales in the fiscal year ended 31 March 2021. That …