Amazon, Samara Capital invest Rs 275 cr in supermarket chain More's parent

E-commerce giant Amazon and private equity firm Samara Capital have jointly invested over Rs 275 crore in Witzig Advisory Services, holding firm of the More supermarket chain, according to regulatory filings, sourced from business intelligence platform Paper.vc.

Witzig has allotted a total of 193 million equity shares to the investors to raise this capital at a premium of Rs 4.28 per share and paid-up capital of Rs 10 per share.

In September 2018, Samara Capital and Amazon signed a deal to acquire food and grocery retail chain More from the Aditya Birla Group, in a deal reportedly valued at around Rs 4,200 crore.

 

Amazon competes with Walmart-owned Flipkart and Reliance’s e-commerce venture Jiomart, which are also rapidly bringing kiranas and local shops onto their platforms. It also competes with online grocers such as Bigbasket, Grofers, Swiggy and Google-backed Dunzo.

The investment comes at a time when Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL), a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries Ltd, recently said it was acquiring many businesses of retail conglomerate Future Group in a Rs 24,713 crore deal. 

Last year, Amazon acquired a 49 per cent stake in Future Coupons, the promoter entity of Future Retail for Rs 1,500 crore.

Only 7 per cent of the $1.2-trillion retail market is online, and all these players are aggressively eyeing the remaining 93 per cent, according to analysts.