Behind the scenes of the death of Amazon’s joint venture with Narayana Murthy, which accounts for Rs 20,000 crore of e-commerce business.
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
Saif is a writer and co-founder at The Morning Context. He has worked across technology, strategy and business functions during his career. Saif has extensive experience in e-commerce, working with companies such as Snapdeal and LG Electronics in India. He currently works at an edtech startup in Canada. At The Morning Context, he focuses on e-commerce and retail and writes the stories that matter.
Writer
saif@mailtmc.com
Toronto
Ashish is the editor-in-chief of The Morning Context. One of the best-known business feature writers in India, he was selected for Germany’s Robert Bosch Stiftung Fellowship in 2012 and received the Mumbai Press Club RedInk certificate of recognition in 2015 for his story “Inside the Network 18 takeover”. Before joining The Morning Context, Ashish co-founded The Ken, where he was managing editor. His previous writing stints include Mint, Forbes India and The Economic Times.
Editor-in-chief
ashish@mailtmc.com
Mumbai