E-commerce giant Amazon has acquired Indian social commerce startup GlowRoad. The all-cash deal comes as the e-commerce titan looks to strengthen its presence in one of its major foreign markets. Social commerce which is making an inroad in several global markets is a good choice to explore for a company like Amazon that wants to make a bigger push into its other foreign markets.
GlowRoad provides its users with goods at wholesale prices and helps with reselling them on social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp. The platform is easy to use and also provides its customers with logistics and payment services – the social commerce helps to deliver products and has the ability to collect cash. GlowRoad has a network of 6 million resellers who earn 35,000 Indian rupees on average every month. The social commerce startup announced expansion plans into the Southeast Asia region earlier this month and is looking to take over the region.
GlowRoad, which came into the scene four years ago, has raised more than $30 million from funding rounds and counts Accel, Vertex, Korea Investment Partners, and CDH as backers.
Amazon has invested more than $6.5 billion into its Indian operations and its latest acquisition of GlowRoad shows that there is a huge opportunity in the country. Per a spokesperson, the latest acquisition will help Amazon catalyze its plans and commitment to digitalize India’s 10 million businesses by 2025.
“Amazon continues to explore new ways to digitize India and delight customers, micro-entrepreneurs, and sellers, and bringing GlowRoad onboard is a key step in this direction. Together with GlowRoad, Amazon will help accelerate entrepreneurship among millions of creators, homemakers, students, and small sellers from across the country. This acquisition will complement GlowRoad’s already loved service with Amazon’s technology, infrastructure, and digital payments capabilities, bringing more efficiency and cost-saving for everyone,” Amazon said.
Co-founder Shekhar Sahu said that “GlowRoad is committed to creating more ‘homepreneurs’ and bringing many unique and unbranded suppliers to the platform. Even after four years, we have just scratched the surface, and there’s so much more to do.”
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
