Appario Retail is One of the top sellers on the Amazon India marketplace. Appario, funded by the Patni group, will stop selling there within 12 months.
This comes months after Cloudtail, another prominent Amazon India marketplace vendor partially supported by Catamaran. A company sponsored by Narayana Murthy, ceased selling on the e-commerce platform.
“Amazon and India’s Patni group-owned Zodiac Wealth Management LLP have agreed to renew their joint venture, Frontizo Business Services Private Limited. Partners have decided that Appario Retail Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Frontizo, will cease to be a seller on amazon.in and amazon.in/business within the next 12 months,” said an Amazon spokesperson.
He further explained that the partners will continue exploring new business ideas. This will include helping business across India for scaling up their online presence.
Appario and Cloudtail bought 35% sales
According to the reports, last year both the firms Appario and Cloudtail successfully bought 35 percent of sales on the Amazon India marketplace in early 2019.
The e-commerce giant at the time also held large investments in these businesses, but these apparently decreased afterwards.
Indian authorities raided leading sellers on Amazon and Flipkart’s marketplaces in April of this year in search of evidence of possible violations of the country’s competition laws.
According to their financials on Tofler, Appario Retail reported revenues of Rs 14,636 crore and a profit after tax of Rs 54 crore in FY21.
Within a year, Amazon India will delist Appario Retail from the marketplace. The retailer owns the seller firm through a joint venture with Patni Group.
The choice was made six months after Cloudtail India, a joint venture between the e-commerce giant and Catamaran Ventures closed its doors on May 1.
Amazon has been accused of providing these merchants preferential treatment because it holds a stake in them by the seller community.
Amazon and Patni Group announced in a joint statement that they have chosen to renew their joint venture (JV), Frontizo Business Services Private Limited, under which Appario is housed.
The firms have chosen to shut down Appario, which had been a vendor on the marketplace, even though the JV for Frontizo, which provides Amazon with multi-channel customer support services, is still active.