Amazon Pay India acquires Tapzo
Amazon Pay India, Amazon India’s payments arm, has acquired Bengaluru-based app aggregator Tapzo to ramp up its payments business in the country.
Amazon Pay India picked up Tapzo in a cash-and-stock deal that valued the company at $30-40 million, according to two people aware of the development.
The e-commerce major is seeking a bigger slice of India’s booming digital payments economy, which is currently dominated by Paytm.
Sequoia-backed Tapzo has so far raised over $20 million from Sequoia Capital and American Express, among others, since it was founded in 2009 by Ankur Singla, Vishal Pal Chaudhury, Avinash Vankadaru, and Vishrut Chalsani.
According to one of the people mentioned above, the talks with Amazon had started in early 2018.
An Amazon spokesperson, did not confirm the Tapzo acquisition, but said the company “remained focused on building its digital payments business in India. Our commitment to the vision of a less-cash India remains the same. Our goal is to make it easier than ever before for customers to make digital payments by improving customer experience, affordability and daily routines.”
Singla did not respond to requests for comment.
Owned and operated by Coraza Technologies Pvt. Ltd, the startup was launched as a complaint redressal forum called Akosha, but was re-launched later as Helpchat, a personal assistant platform with chatting feature. Eventually, it was pivoted as Tapzo in November 2016.