For this acquisition, Amazon is teaming up with Goldman Sachs and homegrown private equity fund Samara Capital.
Amazon is getting ready to acquire Aditya Birla Group’s food and grocery supermarket chain, More at an enterprise value of Rs 4,500-5,000 crore, reports The Economic Times.
If the deal goes through then this will be the e-commerce giant’s second direct investment in India’s brick-and-mortar retail space. It had picked a 5 percent stake in September last year in India’s largest listed department store chain, Shoppers Stop for Rs 180 crore.
For this acquisition, Amazon is teaming up with Goldman Sachs and homegrown private equity fund Samara Capital.
Amazon plans to pick up a 49 percent stake as the strategic partner, and the trio plan to float a separate company or special purpose vehicle. The final structuring exercise is in the works ahead of a likely formal announcement at the end of this month or early next month.
related news
How will this acquisition help Amazon?
While Amazon could not succeed with its own plan of starting a fully-owned food retailing venture in India due to policy ambiguities, taking over More will strengthen the Seattle-based company’s food and grocery business presence.
The news comes at a time when rival Walmart Inc. bought out online retailer Flipkart for $16 billion.
Some facts on More
More is India’s fourth largest food and grocery chain. It has 493 branded supermarkets and 20 hypermarkets covering more than 2 million sq ft of retail space.