Amazon acquires GlowRoad for its social commerce push

Online marketplace giant Amazon is all set to explore social commerce in India. And as per reports, the leading eCommerce and the tech giant is attempting to take on Shopify throughout markets in the global south. Recently, Amazon acquired Indian social commerce startup GlowRoad in an all-cash deal.

This is meant to give Amazon’s social commerce plans the much-needed push. India remains one of Amazon’s key overseas markets with the company has invested $6.5 billion in the country’s e-commerce operations.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the acquisition of GlowRoad, saying that the move would help the e-commerce giant to continue with its commitment to digitize India’s 10 million businesses by 2025. Amazon’s experimentation with social commerce comes at a time when its chief rival, Walmart-owned Flipkart, is aggressively gearing up its own social commerce offering, called Shopsy, in India.

GlowRoad sells products to customers at wholesale prices and helps them resell them on Facebook and WhatsApp (both owned by Meta). It also provides them with logistics to help deliver the product and collect cash. The four-year-old startup publicly claims that it has built a network of over six million resellers who earn an average of 35,000 Indian rupees ($460) per month.

A spokesperson from Amazon stated that the organziation is constantly innovating ways to digitize India and serve a large volume of customers across markets. The process of onboarding Glowroad will enable them to serve the micro-entrepreneur segment through digitized services. This includes millions of digital content creators, students, homemakers, small-scale sellers, and other such categories of entrepreneurs.

GlowRoad co-founder Shekhar Sahu chimed in stating that the company is committed to the ‘homepreneurs’ segment in specific, and will be bringing a host of small-scale suppliers onto the platform. With the help of Amazon’s resources, they will be able to provide a solid footing for these budding entrepreneurs.