Cloudtail India, formerly one of Amazon India’s largest sellers, has reported an 84% year-on-year decline in operating revenue in FY23, amounting to INR 2,977.8 crore. This decline is attributed to the company’s decision to stop selling on Amazon to comply with regulatory requirements, as revealed in filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, according to a report by Economic Times, citing company intelligence platform Tofler.
The filing states that during the financial year ending on March 31, 2023, Cloudtail India’s board of directors approved the cessation of the company’s business-to-consumer (B2C) operations by April 23, 2022. Shareholders also approved this decision in an extraordinary general meeting held on March 19, 2022. As a result, the company ceased its B2C operations from April 23, 2022. With the decline in revenues, Cloudtail’s net loss for FY23 also decreased to INR 97.8 crore from INR 521.8 crore in the previous year.
The report further notes that Cloudtail India’s parent company has been renamed from Prione Business Services to Amazon Smart Commerce Solutions. In 2022, Amazon became the sole owner of Prione after acquiring a 76% stake from Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures.
Cloudtail India was established in 2014 as a joint venture between Amazon and Catamaran Ventures and was one of the major sellers on Amazon India. However, Amazon reduced its stake from 49% to 24% in 2019 to comply with India’s foreign direct investment (FDI) regulations for the e-commerce sector. Subsequently, the company announced that Cloudtail would cease to be a seller on the platform due to the latest norms that prohibited entities operating an online marketplace and their group companies from owning equity in any of the sellers on the platform or having control over their inventory. Despite this, Cloudtail India continues to provide certain services on the Amazon marketplace, such as seller onboarding, merchandising, and cataloging of products on the platform.
