Azim Premji, founder and chairman of Wipro Limited, who is sitting on a corpus of $1 billion private equity fund PremjiInvest, is attempting to enter into ecommerce sector. He is India’s fourth richest person with total assets worth $14 billion or Rs 84,000 crore.
Reportedly, Azim Premji is all set to buy a stake in Myntra.com for Rs 300 crore, as the valuation of this ecommerce portal has been calculated to the tune of $250 million or Rs 1500 crore. People close to this investment plan have revealed that along with Azim Premji, British investor CDC is also participant of this latest round of investment. Myntra.com is already funded by existing investors Accel Partners and Tiger Global which are US based investors. 
Why Myntra.com?
Arguably, Myntra.com is India’s largest stand alone fashion e-tailer, which has managed to stay ahead of Jabong.com in terms of gross merchandise revenues. Right now, Myntra.com witnesses annual revenues of Rs 800 crore or $120 million and by 2015, it is expected to cross Rs 2500 crore.
In-house private labels account for 15% of all sales inside Myntra, and plans have been already made to increase this share and bring in more fashion conscious people to buy clothes online. The latest round of investments is targeted to make its back-end operations strong and to expand its presence in small and medium sized cities inside India as well.
As of now, Myntra has secured a total of $75 million investment from its existing investors: Tiger Global and Accel Partners.
Debut for Azim Premji In Ecommerce Sector
Through PremjiInvest, Premji has already invested in various portfolios and companies such as ABG Shipyard,Dish TV, JM Financial, Marico, Shopper’s Stop, Koutons and Today’s Writing Products. He is a smart investor and knows when to quit a business. Last year, he gave up 20% of his investment in Manipal Global Education, for a raising more funds for its expansion.
If this latest round of talks with Myntra goes through, then it would mark Azim Premji’s debut in eCommerce sector as an investor.
Indian eCommerce sector is right now on a roll, with a triple digit growth of 150% witnessed in last three years. In the year 2009, there was total online sales of $3.8 billion which has increased to $9.5 billion in 2012.
For an entrepreneur and investor, eCommerce segment is one of the hottest sectors right now, and to make a permanent name in this industry, this is the right time to invest and grow a business. And Azim Premji is doing exactly that. It would be interesting to watch, how much innovation and value-addition his presence can bring into eCommerce.
[…] last year, we had reported that Aziz Premji, founder of IT behemoth Wipro is also trying to enter eCommerce space via investment in Myntra; and eventually he invested $50 million in the venture. […]