Bengaluru: Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy and his wife Sudha Murty have reportedly earned a staggering ₹915 crore ($110 million) from the sale of their stake in e-commerce seller Cloudtail. The Murthy family-led investment firm Catamaran successfully sold a 76 per cent stake in Cloudtail to Amazon for ₹1,332 crore ($160 million), as per regulatory filings.
The Murthy couple’s initial investment in Cloudtail amounted to ₹417 crore ($50 million), with the overall transaction resulting in a remarkable profit of approximately ₹915 crore. This translates to a substantial threefold return on their investment, which had been held for eight years.
The impressive windfall for the Murthy family is attributed to the success of Catamaran over the past decade and its exceptional growth rate. Catamaran’s ownership in Cloudtail was held through the Hober Mallow Trust, with Sudha Murty possessing an 80 per cent stake, while Narayana Murthy held the remaining shares.
Cloudtail, established as a joint venture between Catamaran and Amazon in 2014, aimed to train and onboard merchants for Amazon’s e-commerce platform. The company experienced rapid growth, emerging as Amazon’s largest merchant, accounting for over 50 per cent of its total sales.
However, changes in e-commerce regulations prompted Amazon to reduce its stake in Cloudtail, retaining only 24 per cent and selling the remainder of the shares to Catamaran. Subsequently, Cloudtail announced its decision to cease operations as a merchant in 2022 due to a significant decline in sales and profits.
While Cloudtail reached its peak in sales at ₹19,000 crore in March 2022, profits sharply declined as sales plummeted to ₹3,100 crore a year later in March 2023. Apart from the substantial ₹915 crore profit from the share sale, Catamaran is also entitled to an exit bonus of around 20 per cent of Cloudtail’s FY2022 revenues, according to the original partnership agreement with Amazon.
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