Indian ecommerce giant Flipkart, which was snapped up by Walmart in a $16Bn deal, seems all set to go public as early as 2021, a source told Reuters. The company is reportedly preparing to file for IPO in either Singapore or the USA at a target valuation of $50 billion.
“Flipkart is incorporated in Singapore, but listing in the United States, where parent Walmart is headquartered, could give it access to a deeper pool of funds,” said the source.
Multiple sources close to the company have revealed that Flipkart executives are already discussing being ‘IPO ready’ in their meetings. One of those sources said, “Right now, the IPO target is more or less considered to be late 2021, or early 2022, but the current crisis has made things a little blurry.”
This is a move that is enabled by the Indian government’s new regulations that were announced in May this year, allowing Indian companies to directly list overseas. These new regulations were approved in March and were unveiled as part of the government’s efforts to encourage ease-of-doing-business.
The matter is being discussed internally for now and the company will reach out to external help on the process, confirmed the source.
Flipkart’s parent company, Walmart had revealed plans to take Flipkart public in four years after it acquired a 77% stake in the e-commerce platform for $16 billion in 2018, which is till date the biggest single foreign investment in India(even though Amazon’s investment in Reliance Retail, if it happens, can be potentially bigger). Since then the ecommerce website has managed to become a household name, even though it has been witnessing increasing competition in the Indian market currently, with the launch of JioMart, which has confirmed it will expand to fashion and electronics. Recently in July the Walmart owned e-commerce platform had raised $1.2 billion in new investments led by its parent company, valuing Flipkart at $24.9 billion.
