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Global e-commerce major Amazon on Friday will pay Rs 39.80 crore to acquire the publishing arm of Westland Ltd, giving it access to a library of popular books and offer local content to push higher sales of its Kindle reader in India.
The acquisition, which includes its imprints Tranquebar, EastWest and Mikros will also help Amazon score over rival Flipkart by offering ahead books by authors such as Amish Tripathi and Ashwin Sanghi exclusively to its customers.
Westland was a unit of Trent, the retail company of the Tata Group. In February, Amazon had paid Rs 9.5 crore to acquire 26% in Westland with an option to buy out the remaining stake in the five decade old company, taking its total investment to nearly Rs 50 crore.
Westland continues to retain its trade books business.
Books continue to be a popular item sold on India's e-commerce stores.
Both Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos, the promoter of Amazon and his Indian rivals Sachin and Binny Bansal began their respective ventures selling books online. Amazon has gone a step ahead launching e-books on its Kindle platform.
In India, Amazon offers over 3 million books to Kindle users, while it has also stepped up the device sales in the country. It does not disclose number of Kindle users in the country.
"Our acquisition of Westland continues our commitment to India, enabling Amazon to bring Westland's highly talented authors and their books to even more customers in India and around the world," said Amit Agarwal, Vice President and Country Manager at Amazon India in a statement.
Interestingly, Amazon, which is a marketplace in India has executed the buy through Amazon's unit in Luxembourg, the European tax haven. This will allow it to bypass India's foreign direct investment norms for e-commerce marketplaces that prohibits a single vendor owning over 25 per cent of sales on the platform.
