Samara Capital-Amazon consortium will acquire Birla's retail chain 'More'

Samara Capital and Amazon are likely to buy Aditya Birla Group’s food and grocery retail chain ‘More’. Samara Capital-Amazon consortium will acquire Kumar Mangalam Birla’s Aditya Birla Retail Ltd (ABRL) at an enterprise value of Rs 4,100- 4,200 crore. 

It is being expected that the deal will be completed in the next 10 days, possibly as early as this week. The acquisition will effectively wipe out the entire debt in ABRL’s book, which stood at about Rs 4,000 crore as of March 2018. 

51% stake will be acquired by the Samara Capital in the company while the remaining will be held by Amazon.

The retail chain has no restriction on FDI, which means that once the deal is completed, Samara and Amazon won’t have to take approvals from individual state governments to operate More stores.

The investment made by the Samara Capital in ABRL will be through the alternative investment fund (AIF) route. 

More has 575 stores across the country. It is the fourth largest supermarket chain in India after Future Group’s Big Bazaar, Reliance Retail and DMart. 

More will be Amazon’s second direct investment in India’s brick-and-mortar retail space after it acquired 5% stake in department store chain Shoppers Stop for about Rs 180 crore in September last year.