Amazon shuts down Junglee, integrates with classifieds business Local Finds

Amazon-owned price comparison platform Junglee has shut down its independent identity after five years of operations. It has integrated the platform into Amazon.in through Local Finds that made debut in India in August, this year. Local Finds allows customers to find and sell used and new goods.

Junglee has been struggling to find a place in Indian e-commerce space for a long time. The platform pivoted to several models before integrating with Local Finds. In 2014, it pivoted to classifieds for a brief period. Later, it again pivoted to become a horizontal e-commerce platform.

In October same year, along the lines of Quikr and OLX Junglee re-entered classifieds space with ‘post Your Ad’ feature. It essentially allowed users to submit free ads.

“We built the peer-to-peer shopping and selling experience through Junglee and integrated it into Amazon.in through Local Finds to offer a seamless shopping experience on a unified platform,” Amazon said in a statement to VCCircle.

Junglee was founded by former Amazon employees and veteran tech entrepreneurs Anand Rajaraman, Rakesh Mathur, Venky Harinarayan, and Ashish Gupta in 1997. It was later acquired by Amazon in whopping $250 million.

Through Local Finds, customers in the same city can buy and sell products with each other across categories such as books, fashion, home decor, music, movies, mobiles, laptops, accessories, tablets, and video games. Currently, it’s operational in 10 cities, including Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi amongst others.

Unlike other classifieds platform, Local Finds facilitates pick-up, packaging, shipping, delivery and payments services to users.

“Through our pilot, we realised that in every city, we have customers who have a few products to sell – some want to get value for their used products, others are hobbyists, creators and home entrepreneurs, who need to find the right customers for what they collect or create. This apart, there are also customers who are interested in buying such products,” said the spokesperson.