Amazon Invests $20 Million In Chinese Food Offering

Amazon has invested $20 million in Yummy77, a food-delivery website which is based in Shanghai. Yummy77 used Weibo to make the announcement. It is understood that they will use the additional capital to enlarge Amazon China's selection of goods, and to venture into other markets.   This marks the first time that Amazon has injected funds into a Chinese company, though they launched in the country 10 years ago. Amazon said it will hold a minority share in Yummy77, which will continue to operate independently instead of being incorporated into Amazon China.   In February of last year Yummy77 declared itself as having one million active users and a turnover of $16 million, though it has still much ground to cover before it achieves the money-making force of Alibaba, which, in spite of Yummy77's rise, still very much rules the Chinese roost.    It is very possible that Yummy77 will be a more problematical competitor for Alibaba in the next number of years because of the capital provided by Amazon.   That Amazon’s first investment in China is a food-delivery site is unsurprising when one considers the speed with which the online grocery market is growing, particularly in urban environments such as Shanghai and Beijing.   Amazon’s other recent undertakings in China include the expansion of Amazon Web Services, a key part of its competitive strategy against Alibaba, which operates a cloud computing platform called Aliyun.   © 2014 - European Supermarket Magazine by Peter Donnelly To sign up to ESM’s weekly e-zine newsletter, send an email with the subject: ‘Subscribe ESM news’ to [email protected]