Amazon’s business in India is growing, with regulatory filings showing its B2B arm recorded a profit of $413,700 in 2017.
According to The Economic Times, Amazon Wholesale, the company’s B2B wholesale distributor, also purchased goods worth $1.14 billion, in comparison to $591,100 in 2016. But as Inc 42 pointed out, that drastic rise is due to a change in eCommerce guidelines, which stated that sales from a single seller could not exceed 25 percent of the total gross merchandise volume (GMV) of a marketplace.
The filings also show that the company put $306 million of funding into its Indian arm, Amazon Seller Services, which posted a 41 percent increase in earnings to $485.4 million.
It is believed that Amazon India, which reported over 105 percent growth in revenue last year, could now be valued at $16 billion. It is expected to reach $70 billion in GMV and $11 billion in net sales by 2027.
Amazon has been carefully plotting its growth in India. In April, the company revealed that it was expanding its grocery offerings in India, as the company anticipates that the market will account for over half of its business in the country in the next five years. As a result, the company has opened 15 fulfillment centers in Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai to create a specialized network for it groceries business.
The company also has plans to offer more private label products to consumers in India.
And just this week, it was announced that Amazon led a new $12 million round of funding in Acko, a digital insurance startup in India.
All of this is good news for Amazon, which suffered a rare defeat when it lost the chance to gain a majority stake in India’s eCommerce power player Flipkart. That prize went to Walmart with a $15 billion bid on the firm, giving the retailer a majority stake in the firm, roughly 75 percent of the entire Flipkart group.