Cloudtail India revenue up 25%, touches Rs 8,945 crore

1. Cloudtail India revenue up 25%, touches Rs 8,945 crore Cloudtail India, the single largest seller on Amazon’s India marketplace, has reported revenue growth of 25% to Rs 8,945 crore in the year ended March 2019, despite the seller running into regulatory hurdles that resulted in some downtime in the January quarter. Owned by Prione Business Services, a joint venture between Amazon and Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures, Cloudtail posted a profit of Rs 29.4 crore in 2018-19, according to regulatory filings accessed through business intelligence platform Tofler. The company had reported a loss of Rs 4.11 crore in FY18, and a profit of Rs 1.6 crore in FY17. The regulatory filings also revealed that Cloudtail’s expenses shot up by 27% to Rs 8,899 crore during the previous financial year, the largest portion of which was purchases of stock, which contributed Rs 8,537 crore. Cloudtail’s growth comes despite a major change in ownership of its holding company, which was done in order to remain compliant with the country’s FDI regulations. Amazon reduced its stake in Prione from 49% to 24% following the implementation of Press Note 2 in February this year. The change was made so that Prione, and its subsidiary Cloudtail, would no longer be an Amazon group company, making it eligible to sell on the US online retail giant’s India marketplace. For Cloudtail, the implementation of PN2 on February 1 saw the seller delisting most of its products from Amazon’s marketplace. The downtime lasted for a week, after which the seller returned to the marketplace, with the majority of its inventory being available post the restructuring. “We did make some changes to our structure to stay in compliance with all regulations. There were a few days of downtime for some of our selection. But for the full quarter, the impact was minimal,” Amazo .. Amazon chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky told investors and analysts in April. Cloudtail, along with Appario, the other Amazon joint venture with founders of Patni Computers, are today the largest sellers on Amazon’s India marketplace. Add to the mix Amazon Retail, the US firm’s wholly-owned food retailer, and Amazon Retail Pantry, and a large chunk of sales on the marketplace are today driven by these sellers. According to Seller Ratings, a website that tracks Amazon’s sellers across the globe, Appario, Cloudtail and Amazon Retail ranked number one to three respectively over the past one year on Amazon’s India marketplace. Amazon Retail Pantry was ranked number 32 for sales over the past one year, but is currently ranked at seven.

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