Amazon acquires GlowRoad

On Friday, the United States-based e-commerce giant, Amazon India announced that it has completed the acquisition of GlowRoad. GlowRoad is a women-centric social commerce company. This is the first investment of the e-commerce giant Amazon to expand its social commerce vertical in India. However, the transactional details of the acquisition have not been disclosed yet, but according to several media reports, GlowRoad was valued at $75 million in this acquisition. Reports by TechCrunch and Economic Times also indicated that the e-commerce platform bought the social commerce company in an all-cash deal. Amazon hopes that the acquisition will assist the company to achieve its goal to digitize 10 million businesses by 2025.

After the deal, an Amazon spokesperson said, “Amazon continues to explore new ways to digitise India and delight customers, micro- entrepreneurs and sellers and bringing GlowRoad onboard is a key step in this direction. Together with GlowRoad, Amazon will help accelerate entrepreneurship among millions of creators, homemakers, students, and small sellers from across the country. This acquisition will complement GlowRoad’s already loved service with Amazon’s technology, infrastructure, and digital payments capabilities, bringing more efficiency and cost-saving for everyone.” Social commerce company, GlowRoad was founded by Sonal Verma, Kunal Sinha, Nitesh Pant, Shekhar Sahu, and Nilesh Padariya in 2017. The founders of the company, jointly, have about 50% shareholdings in the company.