Amazon, Samara Capital Acquire Aditya Birla Group’s Retail Chain ‘More’.

November 13, 2018 written by
samara capital, amazon acquire aditya birla group retail chain

Samara Capital-Amazon consortium buys More at an enterprise value of $593.57 Mn (INR 4,200 Cr).It acquired a 51% stake and Amazon will hold the remaining 49% in More. Pranab Barua, who heads the retail and apparel vertical of the Aditya Birla Group, is likely to head the operations.

 

In what seems like a major boost to global ecommerce giant Amazon’s plans of dominating the retail market in India.

 

Why Does Amazon Want ‘More’ In Its Kitty?

Despite recording continuous losses, More is the fourth-largest supermarket chain operator in India. There are 493 supermarkets and 20

hypermarkets under the More brand across the country, covering more than 2 Mn sq ft of retail space.

However, More lags behind the Future Group, Reliance Retail, and DMart in terms of the number of outlets.

In FY17, ABRL reported a 20% increase in sales to $600.52 Mn (INR 4,194 Cr), reducing its net loss to $92.21 Mn (INR 644 Cr). However, the company had a debt of about $941.14 Mn (INR 6,573 Cr) on its books and financing costs amounted to $67.43Mn (INR 471 Cr) for the year.

After significantly scaling down its operations, More achieved a store-level EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) breakeven.

In the last few months, reports have been also doing the rounds that Amazon is in talks with Kishore Biyani’s Future Retail and Spencer’s Retail.

E-shop - Amazon Strengthens Warehouse Network To Meet Festive Demand (1)

More complements Amazon’s plans to venture into food retail in India — a plan that has hit a major roadblock due to policy ambiguities, even though Amazon had received in-principle approval to invest $500 Mn in a subsidiary that was allowed to sell locally produced and packaged foodstuff, both online and offline.

According to a report by Citi Research, Amazon India is expected to reach $17 Bn in GMV in 2020 and $23 Bn in 2021.

In the wake of global retailer Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart, Amazon has been wracking its brains hard on how to expand its retail presence in the country. And More, with its large chain of stores across the country, fits the bill to serve as the catalyst for this expansion.

 

Clovia to go big on video content, will launch user-generated short films

 

As lingerie brand Clovia seeks to expand its market footprint, it is planning to focus more on video content and launch digital short films made by its customers.

“Video is a great way to engage with our customers and it is growing as a medium for us.

We are working on a video campaign on digital media wherein we will have our customers participate by uploading their short films. While we will also do generic content, we will focus more on video.

They have 200 plus influencers now, who upload video content on social media platforms. They do shopping-haul YouTube videos and offer coupons to their subscribers, which is getting them very good traction.

Clovia’s most successful content initiative is the one with stand-up comedian Neeti Palta, which garnered around 1 million views.

 

The brand will also continue its partnership with her and look for more content on the similar lines.

Clovia has always stayed away from the capital-intensive TV advertising and kept its ad campaigns digitally focused.

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