Amazon cuts deal with Cloudtail to return products to India website

Amazon.com Inc resurrected thousands of suspended product listings in India by selling much of its stake in top local venture partner Cloudtail, a hastily arranged deal intended to comply with stringent new e-commerce regulations that upended the market.
With the transaction, Cloudtail resumed selling products as of midnight, people familiar with the matter said. The Amazon entity sold 25 per cent of its shares to Prione Business Services Pvt, a company run by billionaire Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Advisors LLP. Prione now owns 76 per cent of the venture from 51 per cent previously, they said. The remaining 24 per cent is now owned by a non-Indian arm of the US retailer’s called Amazon Asia-Pacific Resources Ltd, they said, asking not to be identified talking about a private matter.
The deal allowed Amazon to recover a big chunk of item listings frozen since Feb. 1, when newly introduced e-commerce regulations threw Amazon’s and Walmart Inc.’s plans for the world’s fastest-growing online retail arena into disarray. Heeding complaints from small merchants, Narendra Modi’s government banned Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart from cutting exclusive arrangements with sellers, offering deep discounts or holding any business interest in online merchants on their websites. Read More

Article Source -> Business Standard