Jamuna Group has retracted its plan to invest in Evaly after analysing the beleaguered e-commerce platform's assets and liabilities and business strategy, said a top official of Jamuna Group yesterday.

"We initially became interested to invest after Evaly invited us but now we are withdrawing," Mohammed Alamgir Alam, Jamuna Group's director of marketing, sales and operation, told The Daily Star.

Evaly's assets and liabilities, business, sales and marketing strategies did not meet Jamuna's criteria for investment, he added.

Jamuna does not want to put its reputation and money at stake, Alam said in a Facebook post earlier in the day.

In a Facebook post on July 27, Mohammad Rassel, chief executive officer of Evaly, disclosed that Jamuna Group has decided to invest Tk 1,000 crore in the company, which has disrupted Bangladesh's e-commerce landscape since its entry on December 16, 2018 with its incredulous discounts.

Later, Jamuna Group divulged that the Tk 200 crore of the initial investment was in supplier's credit, which remains outstanding. In other words, Jamuna Group was converting debt into equity, so it is not a cash injection per se.

And the rest of the amount, as per the letter of intent -- which is not a legally binding contract between the two parties -- would most likely be in the form of goods.

Now, Alam has quashed all possibility of injecting cash in Evaly, which has been searching high and low for funding to fill the massive hole in its books brought about by its aggressive customer acquisition strategy.

As of July 15, Evaly, which is facing the wrath of customers and vendors alike for delayed delivery of goods and payment, has total liabilities of Tk 543 crore, according to its response on September 2 to the commerce ministry's show-cause notice on its financial status.

Of the sum, it owes Tk 311 crore to more than 2 lakh customers, who have been waiting a while for goods they purchased with advance payment on the platform.

It owes Tk 206 crore to merchants. Evaly did not disclose the number of vendors it owes money to in its response to the commerce ministry's show-cause notice.

The e-commerce platform had assets amounting to about Tk 92 crore, and of the amount, the current asset was Tk 65 crore.

Rassel, who faces a travel ban because of an ongoing probe into the disappearance of Tk 338 crore from Evaly's accounts, declined to make any comment on Jamuna Group's decision to walk back on its plan to invest.

"We are constantly on the lookout for investors," he told The Daily Star.