Amazon bets high stakes on its business arm

AmazonBusiness, a business to business selling platform, which includes FMCG, food and beverages, office supplies, IT products, health and personal products and cleaning supplies, is going full steam with its plans for India.
AmazonBusiness has received Rs 160 crore in capital infusion. This follows closely after Rs 115 crore tranche it received from the parent company. The online marketplace’s whole sale arm was started in 2013.Amazon, with a total asset of $65.44 billion is aggressively going ahead with its plans for India.
It currently runs its business in Bengaluru and Mangaluru, with FMCG forming the majority of its sales. The platform is also a marketing and distribution channel for brands such as Coolpad and Motorola that do not have offline channels. Amazon Wholesale has started shipping smartphones of these companies to other locations including Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. The company is yet to start its FMCG or any other category for that matter in these locations. Currently the wholesale platform works with 10,000 sellers in Bengaluru and has registered annual sales of $1 billion in 2015.
The current business model incorporates extension of credit lines to corner stores, pharmacies and small outlets to order from its platform through a partnership with banks and non-banking financial institutions. The platform currently ships for free and hence the stores ordering from them do not incur any logistics cost.
Considering the ever increasing challenge in the e-commerce field from Flipkart and likes, the Jeff Bezos led company will extend its commitment to India by an additional $3 billion. With the potential entry of Wal-Mart and Alibaba (prime investor of Paytm) the competition in the online marketplace goes on increasing by the day. The investment in India will continue to be a part of long-term commitment for Amazon but specific details of their investments are withheld. As per a 2014 report by Wal-Mart, the Indian B2B has the potential to grow to $700 billion by 2020.

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