US-based e-commerce giant Amazon, along with private equity firm Samara Capital has acquired Aditya Birla Group‘s food and grocery retail chain More. The details of the deal remain undisclosed, but the deal is speculated to be worth around ₹4,200 crores.
The deal has been done through Witzig Advisory Services, owned by Samara Capital, with Amazon acquiring the minority 49% stake, as per reports.
Pranab Barua, director of apparel and retail businesses at Aditya Birla Group, will be heading the acquired entity as a director.
This deal will help Amazon boost its efforts to dominate the Indian grocery segment, as it fights it out with Indian online retailer Flipkart.
Last month, Flipkart had ventured into the online grocery segment by launching Flipkart Supermart and plans to inject over ₹1,800 crores over the next three years.
RKN Retail, a promoter entity of Aditya Birla Retail has agreed to sell its entire 62.2% stake in the retail chain to Witzig.
“The board of directors of the company, at its meeting held on September 19, 2018, has approved the sale of its entire shareholding in Aditya Birla Retail Ltd,” RKN said in an exchange filing on Wednesday.
Witzig will first acquire the stake in Aditya Birla Retail from RKN Retail and the remaining stake will be acquired from Kanishtha Finance and Investment, another promoter entity of Aditya Birla Retail.
After Future Group, Reliance Retail, and D-Mart, More is the fourth largest retail chain in the country, with 523 Supermarkets and 20 Hypermarkets covering more than 2 million sq ft of retail space, the retailer provides an extensive network for Amazon to grow its grocery business across India.
In FY18, Aditya Birla Retail posted it’s first positive earning before EBITDA of ₹1 crore. The revenue grew by 5% to touch ₹4,000 crores this fiscal. The net losses were brought to ₹490 crores in FY18, from ₹644 crores in FY17. As of March, Aditya Birla Retail has a total debt of around ₹4,000 crores, which expected to be covered by the recent deal.