The seven-year partnership between Amazon and Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy’s private equity and venture capital firm Catamaran will come to an end for the ecommerce marketplace business.
The joint venture between these two firms called Prione Business Services had set up Cloudtail India, which is one of the largest sellers on the Amazon marketplace.
A joint statement from Amazon and Catamaran Ventures read, “Prione Business Services Pvt Ltd, the joint venture between Amazon and Catamaran, has been running successfully for the past seven years and comes up for renewal on May 19, 2022. The two partners today announced they have mutually decided to not continue their joint venture beyond the end of its current term.”
Amit Agarwal, Global Senior VP and Country Head, Amazon India
Amit Agarwal, Global Senior VP and Country Head – Amazon India, said, “Amazon and Catamaran entered into a JV in the early days of ecommerce in India, with a shared vision of transforming hundreds of thousands of small businesses in a fast-changing digital world, by providing online capabilities enabling them to access customers both in India and globally.”
The country head of Amazon India noted that this partnership had helped set the direction for ecommerce in India.
Catamaran President MD Ranganath said, “We are happy that Prione has leveraged global best practices for ecommerce in India, created jobs, and provided millions of Indian customers access to a wide selection of products from across the country by leveraging technology.”
According to the statement, the joint venture has enabled over 300,000 sellers and entrepreneurs to go online, and enabled four million merchants with digital payment capabilities, providing these SMBs and merchants access to millions of customers across the country.
The partnership between Amazon and Catamaran had its fair set of challenges, especially regarding the ecommerce regulations. The government had brought in a new set of rules which restricted the volume of business a particular seller can engage with the ecommerce marketplace. This led to changes in the joint venture’s structure.
