Walmart Plans To Invest $1.2 Billion In Flipkart

In another attempt to develop its e-commerce marketplace in India and an emergence strategy from the covid-19 crisis, Flipkart has accumulated a $1.2 billion equity round. The funds mostly came from Walmart, Flipkart’s majority shareowner along with a group of other shareholders of the company, the total valuation of the company came up to $24.9 billion post-money.

Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said, “We’re grateful for the strong backing of our shareholders as we continue to build our platform and serve the growing needs of Indian consumers during these challenging times.” He further added, “Since Walmart’s initial investment in Flipkart, we have greatly expanded our offer through technology, partnerships, and new services. Today, we lead in electronics and fashion and are rapidly accelerating share in other general merchandise categories and grocery, providing increasingly seamless payment and delivery options for our customers. We will continue innovating to bring the next 200 million Indian shoppers online.” 

The 13-year-old firm Flipkart has a lot of other platforms under it which includes Flipkart, Digital payments platform PhonePe, Fashion and lifestyle specialist Myntra along with logistics and delivery service EKart which is committed towards better delivery and logistics in all the major cities. Flipkart which has a rivalry with Amazon in India brought out some figures stating that its active number of customers rose up to 45% in this financial year that ended in March. In comparison to last year, the number of transactions is 30% more with 1.5 billion visits per month. 

The company has taken an important step towards making the platform easily accessible for all the sellers and MSMEs by including voice assistants and local language interfaces in their system which has proved to be convenient for all non-English speaking customers in the various parts of the country. Flipkart comes with a huge catalog and a good number of products. In its list, it includes 80 categories and 150 million products. In addition to this to make shopping on Flipkart a pleasant experience, the company has introduced Cash-on-Delivery, No-Cost EMI, and easy returns. PhonePe an associate of Flipkart has reported an annual total payments value (TPV) of $180 billion from 500 million monthly transactions.

“Flipkart continues to leverage its culture of innovation to accelerate growth and enable millions of customers, sellers, merchants, and small businesses to prosper and be a part of India’s digital transformation,” said Judith McKenna, President, and CEO of Walmart International. Adding a point to it, he said, “Kalyan and team have a clear vision and are relentlessly focused on giving Indians frictionless choice in how they shop and sell online. We’re excited to see what the future holds as they continue their journey to become India’s most trusted eCommerce marketplace.”