Prione Business Services, a joint venture between Amazon and Catamaran Ventures, the family enterprise of Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy is helping small and medium businesses (SMBs) go digital by helping them with strategies and creating an ecosystem of SMBs.
Prione Business Services was started in 2014 with Catamaran Ventures holding a 76% majority stake. It is also the logistics partner of Amazon India and owns Cloudtail, the single largest seller on Amazon India.
The start-up headquartered in Bengaluru envisions making India self-reliant by promoting local manufacturing and Indian brands.
Recently, it had helped a Jaipur based business named Benavji that was hurt by the pandemic and lockdown to clock more than ₹50 lakh in monthly revenue. Benavji had invested in plant and machinery to scale up its baby clothing business but the Wuhan virus pandemic hurt its capex. Prione came to the rescue that strategized its business by making them produce masks and gloves.
Prione claims to have served in 150 cities in the last 5 years and has seen ₹10,000 crore in consolidated turnovers (Prione + Cloudtail).
The startup has an authorised capital of ₹ 550 crore. As per the details available from the Registrar of Companies, it had a revenue of ₹ 7,245 crore in FY 2018, and ₹ 9,039 crore in FY 2019. The profits in FY 2019 were ₹ 9,039 crore 38 crore.
Prione trains the SMBs on digital marketing, analysing consumer behaviour, warehousing, packaging and cataloguing. It also trains smaller shops on technology through Amazon’s Local Shops programme. It has enabled 3 million sellers to transact digitally.
Sandeep Varagunti, the Managing Director of Prione is planning to on-board 40,000 SMBs by this year end and help them sell their products on Amazon.
“In the last decade, the advent of ecommerce has helped new-age brands. Consumer durables, healthcare, and consumables are going to keep growing, and SMBs will revive the economy. However, the road to recovery is a good 12 or 24 months away. But SMBs need to go digital. They are crucial to India’s economic recovery. Indian SMBs are an alternative for imports from China, and our SMBs can participate in the global supply chain. Local consumption is the key, and from this year, Prione will help SMBs go global,” Mr. Sandeep was quoted saying in an article by YourStory.
Source: YourStory