Amazon acquires its first social commerce startup in India

GlowRoad, a women-focused social commerce company, was acquired by Amazon India on April 22. This is Amazon’s first investment in India to expand its social commerce sector.

Several media sources stated that GlowRoad was valued at $75 million in this agreement, albeit the transactional details have not been published.

According to TechCrunch and the Economic Times claims, Amazon paid cash for the company.

Amazon expects the move will aid in the company’s goal of digitising 10 million businesses by 2025.

“Amazon continues to look for innovative ways to digitally transform India and satisfy customers, micro-entrepreneurs, and sellers, and bringing GlowRoad on board is a significant step in that regard.” Amazon and GlowRoad will work together to help millions of creators, homemakers, students, and small business owners around the country become more entrepreneurial. “Amazon’s technology, infrastructure, and digital payments capabilities will enhance GlowRoad’s already popular service, offering everyone more efficiency and cost savings,” an Amazon representative told Business Insider.

Sonal Verma, Kunal Sinha, Nitesh Pant, Shekhar Sahu, and Nilesh Padariya established GlowRoad in 2017. The company’s founders collectively owned about half of the company’s stock. Verma and Sinha possessed a higher share than the others among the other founders.

To date, Korea Investment Partners, Vertex Ventures, CDH Investments, and RB Investments have contributed about $31 million to the company. According to business information platform Tracxn, Accel is the company’s largest shareholder, with a nearly 19 per cent stake.

The five-year-old firm raised $7 million in its most recent round in November 2020.

GlowRoad is a social commerce platform that allows suppliers to sell their items to end customers via resellers in over 20,000 pin codes across 2,000 locations. Resellers, who are often housewives, temporary workers, or students, help the company target Tier II and III markets.

According to the company’s website, a reseller who sells close to 100 products each month can earn up to 20,000 per month. The platform claims to have over 6 million resellers.

DealShare, CityMall, and YouTube-owned SimSim are competitors. Meesho was in the segment as well, but the company switched to a full-fledged e-commerce platform. Inventiva