Narayana Murthy To Launch A JV With Amazon For Ecommerce

Infosys chairman NR Narayana Murthy is now getting ready to play the second innings of his life. As per reports, Narayana Murthy is entering into an ecommerce joint venture in India with Amazon.com Inc through his investment firm, Catamaran Ventures.

“Catamaran is partnering with Amazon Asia to offer services that help offline sellers and SMBs in India to get online and to take advantage of the fast-growing online customer base in the country.” Arjun Ramegowda Narayanswamy who heads Catamaran Ventures said.

Due to the restrictions in current FDI norms in the country, both the companies have worked out on a structure so that they might not face any legal hurdle. The Infosys co-founders family office will run the venture in India, people close to the development suggest that Catamaran will hold a majority 51% stake in the company.

Earlier, Walmart had a similar Joint Venture with Bharti Enterprises, which didn’t work out and thus Walmart bought out Bharti’s stake in the JV for $100 mn last year.

The deal had led to losses for Walmart of about $234 Mn. let’s see how this venture turns out for Amazon.