Amazon Shows Attention To Retail, May Pick Up 30 Per Cent Stake In Spencer’s 

E-commerce behemoth Amazon India is in talks with the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group to pick up a potential 30 per cent stake in Spencer’s Retail, The Hindu Business Line has reported.

Spencer’s, which operates through its 138 stores and mostly in hypermarket format, posted a net loss of ₹129 crore on a revenue of ₹2,012 crore in FY17.

Amazon has been on an aggressive acquisition path to pick up stakes in offline retail firms. A consortium of private equity fund Samara Capital and Amazon recently bought out hypermarket chain ‘More’ from Aditya Birla Retail. Amazon acquired 49 percent stake while the balance was picked up by Samara Capital. The transaction was valued at Rs 42 billion. More is the fourth-largest supermarket chain in the country. It runs 490 supermarkets and 20 hypermarkets.

As per this report in Business Standard, Amazon is also in negotiations with Kishore Biyani’s Future Group to invest around $600-700 million for a 12 to 15 per cent stake in the retail major.