In October 2014, we had reported that Amazon was in advanced talks to buy a minority stake in gift card technology and retail firm QwikCilver Solutions. 

Now it has been confirmed that Amazon has led a $10-million funding round in QwikCilver Solutions for a stake believed to be just under 15%, reports the Times of India. 

As reported earlier, existing investors Helion Venture Partners and Accel Partners also participated in the fund raise of Bengaluru-based QwikCilver, which provides end-to-end gift card solutions for retailers and corporate customers.

It was founded in 2008 by Kumar Sudarsan, TP Pratap and Bhaskar Vasudevan, all three alumni of BITS-Pilani. QwikCilver provides backend technology for the gift card business of several retailers including Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, Westside and Croma. The company which retails electronic and physical gift cards on its online site GiftBig, also has on offer gift cards of Amazon and Flipkart.

Confirming this development, Kumar Sudarsan, Founder and Director of QwikCilver told the Times of India, "The motivation to get Amazon on board was that they will be able to bring in best practices and global strategies to help us scale the sector to the next level."

According to the Times of India report, the funds raised would be directed towards providing mobile solutions for gifting. The company is also considering bringing out a single company branded gift card which could be used by consumers across its client base "We, in fact, have RBI approval to be a prepaid issuer, and very soon we will announce some unique solutions around this."

At present the gift-card market in India is estimated at $500 million and projected to treble over the next two years. In the US and elsewhere, Amazon has been an active evangelist of the gift card category. Amazon and Apple are the two big issuers of gift cards in the US.

QwikCilver claims to have about 90% share of the gift-card market in the country, with a current annualized sales run-rate of Rs 1,000 crore. The company reports a 500% growth in this category in the past two years.