Last year saw a trend of sorts, with new-age Indian brands roping in highly qualified professionals from the valley. The year also saw folks like Snapdeal opening up office in California. Guess what’s the latest development that caught our attention? Flipkart is expanding to US with an office in Bay Area!
Chief Technology Officer Peeyush Ranjan tweeted that Flipkart is now live in the Bay Area, with their new office opening in Palo Alto, California.
Flipkart has been in the headlines for quite a while. After acquiring Jabong for $70 million, it launched new features namely, Fliptech and Hoppy Hub. There have been rapid fluctuations in its valuation this year – with multiple investors devaluing it, followed by slight rises.
The launching of this new office is aimed at generating and receiving funding from potentially viable Amercian investors. It will further facilitate the e-commerce giant to hire more talent from the region. It’s former Chief Product Officer – Punit Soni was also employed from Bay Area. In fact, when earlier last year Punit was hired, Flipkart was expected to set up its office in the US.
On the other hand Snapdeal, one of the major rivals of Flipkart had set up its data centres in May this year. This was done to strengthen business strategy to optimize its operational efficiencies through data and analytics.
Fidelity valued Flipkart at around $9 billion, rising from the$8.8 billion valuation earlier, while T Rowe marked down its stake by 15% valuing it at $10.3 billion. Valic Co., another investor in Flipkart marked down their stake by 20%. While earlier, Fidelity and Valic had marked down their holdings in the company by 24% and 12% respectively in the previous quarter. Several of Flipkart’s other investors such as Morgan Stanley, Valic, and Vanguard have also marked down their stake over the last six-to-seven months.
Other startups who have opened their offices in America are InMobi, Zomato, Freshdesk.
