Samara Capital, Amazon acquire Birla Group's 'More' retail chain for Rs 4200 Cr
Summary
After months of discussion and negotiation, homegrown PE firm Samara Capital and Amazon have signed a deal to acquire food and grocery retail chain More. Key infrastructures like supply chain are inefficient and broken in tier 2 and 3 cities. Last year, Amazon had picked up 5 per cent stake in Shopper Stop for about 180 crore. Besides, it also interested in picking up stake in Kishore Biyani-led retail behemoth - Future Group.Amazons participation in More buyout can also be seen as its effort to create a formidable omnichannel (aka O2O) business in India through its ecosystem consisting of payments, supply chain, and offline retail.The deal would give a deeper understanding of the Indian retail market to Amazon who now is fighting Walmart.Over the past 15-18 months, horizontal as well as vertical e-commerce players have been emphasizing that e-commerce cant sustain without offline touch. Right from the likes of Flipkart, Amazon, Xiaomi, and Ola to Myntra and Voonik, all seem to be in rush to ramp up the offline part.Meanwhile, Amazons rival Alibaba was also in talks with Future Group and Reliance Retail for investment.