According to sources, More Retail, a company owned by Amazon and the private equity firm Samara Capital, plans to sell around a fifth of its shares to outside investors for a price of about $2 billion.
The sources claim that the Samara and Amazon partnership has approached family offices and domestic capital investors for this round. They also claim that the anticipated share sale comes before a prospective public offering in the ensuing 12 to 18 months.
Samara and Amazon purchased the retail chain in 2019 for an estimated price of less than $600 million. It was formerly a part of the Aditya Birla Group.
“Discussions have been going on about dilution of 10–20% in More to bring in domestic investors before the potential IPO. One of the aforementioned sources stated that the sale to investors would probably be for 15%.
Aware individuals claimed that Amazon is working to further integrate More Retail stores with its online grocery service, Amazon Fresh. Since more people are buying groceries and other necessities online, this is being discussed to support More’s growth plans. In New Delhi and Bengaluru, Amazon Fresh has tested shop pickups for its grocery orders.
Amazon invested in Future Coupons, which managed Kishore Biyani’s Future Retail, in 2019 as part of its ambitious aspirations for offline retail in India. Since Reliance Industries also revealed plans to buy Future Group’s retail assets, the deal has, however, become the subject of a legal dispute.
Amazon was utilizing Future Retail’s BigBazaar outlets for its grocery services prior to the legal dispute. This included its former large grocery store offering, Pantry. To ensure a consistent product offering for Amazon’s India customers, Pantry and Amazon Fresh were combined in 2021.
Coda Holdings Singapore, an Amazon-owned company, invested around Rs 32 crore in More in January of this year. More has over 900 stores across several formats in India. In contrast to the fiscal 2021 period, More Retail reported consolidated revenue of Rs 4,929.11 crore in FY22. In comparison to Rs 104 crore in FY21, losses increased to almost Rs 474 crore in FY22.
Amazon has not entered the so-called fast commerce market, which is dominated by companies like Zepto, Zomato’s Blinkit, Swiggy’s Instamart, and others.
In its quarterly earnings last week, Amazon stated that even though its loss from these areas decreased slightly, its net sales from overseas operations, including India, were flat in the first quarter of 2023. The Seattle-based corporation reported a loss of $1.24 billion on net sales of $29.1 billion from worldwide operations for the three months ended March 31. A year ago, these were $1.28 billion and $28.7 billion, respectively.
