Tiger Global Management, which is the largest investor in e-commerce major Flipkart , has reduced its stake in US rival Amazon by nearly 67% in the March ended-quarter.

The hedge fund has cut its exposure to 1.04 million shares worth $619 million as of March 31, down from 3.19 million shares worth $2.16 billion as of December 31, as per regulatory filings.

The fund also reduced its stake in Chinese e-tailer JD.com by nearly 25% and entirely dissolved its minority stake in Alibaba.

Amazon was Tiger Global’s second-largest public holding, after it had picked up 2.44 million shares for about $1 billion in September last year. The hedge fund however lost 22% in the first three months of this year, as Amazon shares dipped by 12% during the period.

Since then, Amazon shares has risen significantly on the back of a strong financial results and record profit in March ended quarter, resulting in the stock touching its all time high price of $720.6 on May 12.

Tiger Global which manages $20 billion in assets, deploys capital through two business – private equity and public equity funds. Amazon’s investment was through the latter fund while the Flipkart investment was through the former.

Over the past few months, Flipkart has also faced a series of markdowns from its mutual fund investors. Earlier this month, two of Flipkart’s mutual fund investors Fidelity and Valic had further marked down the value of their holdings in the company by nearly 20%.

This was the second consecutive markdown from both the mutual funds . Fidelity and Valic had earlier marked down their holdings in the company by 24% and 12% respectively in the previous quarter.

Besides this, a T Rowe Price-managed mutual fund had also marked it down by 15% in April and a Morgan Stanley-backed mutual fund had marked it down by 27% in February.

Amazon India , Flipkart and Snapdeal are currently locked in a battle for market leadership in the burgeoning e-commerce sector and all three have aggressively spent billions of dollars on marketing, strengthening their supply chains and acquiring customers with predatory discounts.

Source: The Economic Times