Amazon acquires retail tech startup Perpule

In a bid to ramp up its play amongst offline retailers, e-commerce giant Amazon has acquired retail tech startup Perpule. According to regulatory filings by Perpule with the Reserve Bank of India or RBI, Amazon has acquired it in an all-cash deal worth Rs 107.6 crore or $14.7 million.

The transaction is likely to deepen Amazon’s footprint amongst small retailers. 

An Amazon India spokesperson confirmed the acquisition to Entrackr. “Perpule’s cloud PoS will help offline stores of all sizes manage their operations better,” the spokesperson said.

Amazon’s payment arm Amazon Pay had launched a ‘Smart Stores’ feature in June 2020 so that users can scan the store's QR code and explore products inside the store. It’s positioned to increase footfalls and drive sales for retailers. 

Retailers have been using the feature to enable digital storefront instantly. It appears that Perpule would power and drive the adoption of Smart Stores with its PoS solution. 

Perpule’s PoS billing solution product UltraPOS helps retailers in the electronics, fashion, food and beverage, and groceries sectors to improve their efficiency. Its clientele base includes BigBazaar, Oyo, Udaan, Curefit, Wakefit, 24SEVEN among others.

According to a Mint report, Amazon is expected to pay additional remuneration to Perpule’s employees, which may further increase the total deal value to around Rs 150 crore. Following the transaction, most of Perpule’s employees including co-founders Abhinav Pathak, Saketh BSV and Yogesh Ghaturle, are expected to join Amazon.

So far, the company has raised a little over $6 million including its $4.7 million Series A round in November 2018. Its backers include Kalaari Capital, Prime VP and Venture Highway.

Queries sent to Perpule remained unanswered until the publication of the story.

Led by Abhinav Pathak, Perpule had also forayed into the south-east Asian market to help offline retailers to shift to an online platform and mobile application. During the peak of the pandemic (May onwards), the company also launched StoreSe to connect retailers and apartments across 2,000 apartments in Bengaluru and nine other cities.