Amazon Smbhav Venture Fund
Enabling acceleration of small and medium sized businesses
At Amazon India Smbhav 2021, Amazon India had announced the $250 MM Amazon India Smbhav Venture Fund to invest in technology led startups passionate about unlocking possibilities of a digital India. The Venture Fund is focused on areas like digitizing small businesses, enabling universal and quality healthcare access, improving farmer productivity. Over the last 18-24 months, the Venture Fund’s focus has expanded to include opportunities in fintech products & services, e-commerce services, consumer brands, gaming, electrification, machine learning and social media offerings. The Venture Fund’s portfolio includes investments in ‘FreshtoHome’, ‘Hopscotch’, ‘Fitterfly’, ‘Cashify’, ‘MyGlamm’, ‘M1xchange’ and ‘Small Case’.
Amit Agarwal and Andrew Jassy talk about the Smbhav Venture fund and other initiatives announced at Amazon Smbhav Summit 2021
Two additional focus areas will be agriculture and healthcare.
- Agri-tech sector: the Venture Fund aims to invest in Indian startups that are using technology to bring the best produce to consumers, make agri-inputs more accessible to farmers, provide tailored agronomy solutions to farmers to improve productivity, distribute credit and insurance to farmers or reduce food waste by building efficient farm to fork supply chains.
- Healthcare sector: the Venture Fund aims to invest in Indian startups that are using technology for doctor assistance, telemedicine, e-diagnosis, AI powered treatment recommendations or digitizing operations of healthcare providers such as independent primary care clinics, diagnostic labs, pharmacy value chain or specialty doctor clinics for improving access to a wider patient base agnostic of physical geographic location.
Towards this objective and as part of the Venture Fund, Amazon announced an investment in “M1xchange”– a startup focusing on invoice discounting marketplace exchange for MSMEs established under the TReDS license (Trade Receivables Discounting System license). M1xchange connects MSMEs with banks & financiers (and vice versa) through the marketplace exchange and the MSME is able to assign its invoice dues to a bank or financier and receive financing at better rates; thereby, solving the payments challenge for MSMEs.
Enabling SMBs and startups to scale their entrepreneurial dreams
Abhijeet Muzumdar, Head of Amazon Smbhav Venture Fund (ASVF) and Corporate Development at Amazon India and Emerging Markets, talks about the tangible value the fund provides to companies it invests in.
If your business is based in India and you are interested in the Amazon Smbhav Venture Fund, share your details in the link below with your query and we will be in touch with more details in the coming months
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