Walmart seems to have finally woken up to fierce competition in the Indian ecommerce market, and has hence decided to invest $1.2 billion into Flipkart, the Indian ecommerce platform it acquired for nearly $16 billion. Walmart had previously acquired Flipkart two years ago for $16 billion, valuing it at $21 billion at the time. The company’s valuation has now reached $24.9 billion.
Existing shareholders who partcipated have stated that the investment would be funded in two tranches over the remainder of the fiscal year. Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy expressed his company’s aim to expand their services in the field of general merchandise and groceries.
With lockdown now partly removed from most places across India, ecommerce firms have started gaining more traction, as people remain sceptic of visiting physical retail stores. Flipkart too saw that trend. According to a company statement, the platform recently surpassed 1.5 billion visits per month and reported 45% growth in monthly active customers and a 30% growth in transactions per customer for fiscal year 2020.
Walmart’s investment comes at a time when Reliance-owned Jio Platforms has raises to the north of $16 Billion from some of the biggest global investors. That money will fund Jio’s big budget digital dreams, of which ecommerce forms a significant part.
