Amazon and Catamaran who ran the joint venture Prione Business Services Pvt. Ltd. will stop its operation after its renewal on May 19, 2022.
The two companies have taken the decision after running successfully Prione Business Services Pvt. Ltd for the past 7 years. The two partners today announced they have mutually decided to discontinue their joint venture beyond the end of its current term.
The JV has enabled over 300,000 sellers and entrepreneurs to go online and enabled 4 million merchants with digital payment capabilities, providing these SMBs and merchants access to millions of customers across the country.
When Prione Business Services Pvt. Ltd was formed in 2014, ecommerce was still in a nascent stage in India. The small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India were new to digital and needed support, training and tools to go online.
The JV’s vision was to enable Indian SMBs to succeed in e-commerce and benefit from the digital opportunity. In the last 7 years, the JV has made tremendous strides in this direction, leveraging Catamaran’s India insights and Amazon’s technology expertise.
With feet-on-street teams in 30 cities across India, the JV enabled hundreds of thousands of sellers to sell online and provide a wide selection of products for Indian customers. The JV also supported the growth of programs like Karigar and Saheli.
Prione Business Services Pvt. Ltd has played an important role in transforming Indian e-commerce, and paving the way for the global scale up of emerging Indian brands.
Catamaran President M.D. Ranganath said the company is happy that Prione has leveraged global best practices for e-commerce in India, created jobs, and provided millions of Indian customers access to a wide selection of products from across the country by leveraging technology.
“As our JV with Amazon reaches the end of its tenure, I reflect on this successful partnership that introduced the power of digitization and empowered hundreds of thousands of SMBs across big and small towns. We would like to thank Amazon for the partnership that leaves behind a strong legacy of shaping e-commerce in India,” said M.D. Ranganath.
Amazon India Global Senior VP and Country Head Amit Agarwal said Amazon and Catamaran entered into a JV in the early days of ecommerce in India with a shared vision of transforming hundreds of thousands of small businesses in a fast-changing digital world, by providing online capabilities enabling them to access customers both in India and globally.
“We are humbled by how the JV exceeded its vision, helping online commerce evolve through the unrelenting efforts of hundreds of its employees, positively impacting over 4.3 million small businesses, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and contributing to India’s digital economy. We were privileged to have had a partner we could learn from and lean on. I would like to thank the Catamaran team for this long and fruitful partnership that helped set the direction for e-commerce in India,” said Amit Agarwal.
About Catamaran:
Catamaran is a catalyst for creating innovative enterprises in India and manages over $1 billion across asset classes. Catamaran invests in bold ideas from passionate entrepreneurs and works with them across stages to build successful enterprises. Further, it has partnered with respected global corporations to create enduring enterprises in India. Catamaran also invests in listed companies catering to large markets, with high standards of corporate governance and the ability to stay resilient across economic cycles. Please visit www.catamaran.in for more details.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon.
