Amazon has acquired GlowRoad for an undisclosed amount, marking the global e-commerce giant’s entry into the social commerce space. While the company did not respond to BusinessLine queries on the specifics of the deal, it is reported to be an all-cash deal.

“Amazon continues to explore new ways to digitise India and delight customers, micro-entrepreneurs and sellers, and bringing GlowRoad onboard is a key step in this direction. Together with GlowRoad, Amazon will help accelerate entrepreneurship among millions of creators, homemakers, students, and small sellers from across the country. This is a step further in Amazon’s commitment to digitise 10 million local Indian businesses by 2025,” said an Amazon spokesperson.

He added that the integration of GlowRoad’s social commerce service with Amazon’s technology, infrastructure and digital payments capabilities, “is expected to bring more efficiency and cost-saving for everyone”.

Amazon’s major rival in India, Walmart-owned Flipkart entered the social commerce space last year with the launch of Flipkart Shopsy. Other players in the sector include Meesho and Dealshare. 

GlowRoad’s profile

GlowRoad was founded by Sonal Verma, Kunal Sinha, Nitesh Pant, Shekhar Sahu, and Nilesh Padariya in 2017. The company allows users to resell products directly from manufacturers and wholesalers through social networks like WhatsApp, Facebook, etc. 

According to GlowRoad’s Linkedin page, the platform hosts over 6 million resellers from more than 1,000 cities across India. The majority of resellers on the platform are said to be women from tier 2 and beyond cities. The company has 201-500 employees. Some of the investors in GlowRoad include Accel, CDH China, Korea Investment Partners and Vertex.

Tough business

Social commerce is a tough business to grow sustainably. On-demand side, it’s very competitive with multiple players trying to get the attention of the customers and also expensive from a logistics cost perspective. 

In the past few months, the social commerce space has been witnessing a spate of layoffs and consolidations. Just last month, Singapore’s Shopee shut down its India operations within six months of launch. Another social commerce player, Meesho laid off 150 employees from its grocery vertical in an attempt to boost efficiencies. 

Earlier this month, speaking about competition in the social commerce market, Prakash Sikaria, Senior Vice President–Marketing, Growth & New Business, Flipkart told BusinessLine, “There will be market leaders and others will significantly scale down to make the ends meet or make sustainability work. We are already seeing some early trends of that with Shopee shutting down, and also seeing other players trying to slow the growth momentum to figure out the sustainability of their business.”

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