Amazon doubles capital to Rs 31,000 cr in e-commerce battle against Flipkart

Mumbai: In a bid to overtake Flipkart to become the biggest player in the e-commerce field, Amazon has doubled its authorised capital to Rs 31,000 crore.

With this capital boost, Amazon will have invested USD 1 billion in its business in the running financial year. It has already seen three capital infusions this year.

The infusion of funds comes despite Amazon posting a USD 936-million loss from its international business arm for the quarter ended September. The loss came on the back of the e-commerce major’s heavy investment in India.

The beefing up of the capital infusion is being largely viewed as Amazon’s efforts at battling domestic e-commerce biggie Flipkart in one of the largest online markets in the world.

“As India’s largest and fastest growing e-commerce player, and with a long-term commitment to make e-commerce a habit for Indian customers, we continue to invest in the necessary technology and infrastructure to grow the entire ecosystem. We are delighted and humbled by the trust from our customers, to lead in India on things that matter to our customers in over four years of our business, while continuing to launch innovative India-first initiatives as well as completely new offerings like Echo, Prime and Prime Video,” said an Amazon India spokeswoman in response to a query from Mint.

Flipkart has also been raising funds and its profile boasts of investors like Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp., China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd, South Africa’s Naspers Ltd and Accel Partners. It has already raised nearly USD 3 billion in two separate tranches in 2017.