Walmart Acquires Flipkart in India

Flipkart Pvt Ltd. is an Indian electronic commerce company headquartered in Bengaluru, India. Founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (no relation) in 2007, the company initially focused on book sales, before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics and fashion.

Flipkart has received significant amounts of funding from various partners. It competes primarily with Amazon and the local rival Snapdeal.

In May 2018, Walmart bought a 77% stake in the company for $17 billion USD, making this acquisition the world's largest in e-commerce.

History

Flipkart was founded in October 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, who were both alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and formerly worked for Amazon. The company initially focused on online book sales with country-wide shipping. Following its launch, Flipkart slowly grew in prominence; by 2008, it was receiving 100 orders per day. In 2010, Flipkart acquired the Bangalore-based social book discovery service weRead from Lulu.com.

In late-2011, Flipkart made several acquisitions relating to digital distribution, including Mime360.com and the digital content library of Bollywood portal Chakpak. In February 2012, the company unveiled its DRM-free online music store Flyte, but the service was unsuccessful due to competition from free streaming sites, and shut down in June 2013. In May 2012, Flipkart acquired Letsbuy, an online electronics retailer. In May 2014, Flipkart acquired Myntra, an online fashion retailer, for ₹20 billion (US$310 million).

In February 2014, Flipkart partnered with Motorola Mobility to be the exclusive Indian retailer of its Moto G smartphone. Motorola also partnered with Flipkart on the Moto E—a phone targeted primarily towards emerging markets such as India. High demand for the phone caused the Flipkart website to crash following its midnight launch on 14 May. Flipkart subsequently held exclusive Indian launches for other smartphones, including the Xiaomi Mi3 in July 2014 (whose initial release of 10,000 devices sold out in around 5 seconds), the Redmi 1S and Redmi Note in late-2014 (which saw similarly accelerated sellouts), and Micromax's Yu Yunique 2 in 2017.

On 6 October 2014, Flipkart held a major sale across the service that it promoted as "Big Billion Day". The event generated a surge of traffic, selling US$100 million worth of goods in 10 hours. The event received criticism via social media over technical issues the site experienced during the event, as well as stock shortages.

In 2015, Flipkart acquired Appiterate, a Delhi-based mobile marketing automation firm. Flipkart stated that it would use its technology to enhance its mobile services. In October 2015, Flipkart reprised its Big Billion Day event, except as a multi-day event that would would be exclusive to the Flipkart mobile app. Flipkart also stated that it had bolstered its supply chain and introduced more fulfilment centres in order to meet customer demand. Flipkart achieved a gross merchandise volume of US$300 million during the event, with the largest volumes coming from fashion sales, and the largest value coming from mobiles.

In December 2015, Flipkart purchased a minority stake in the digital mapping provider MapmyIndia. The company stated that it would licence its data to help improve delivery logistics. In 2016, Flipkart acquired the online fashion retailer Jabong.com from Rocket Internet for US$70 million, as well as the UPI mobile payments startup PhonePe. In January 2017, Flipkart made a US$2 million investment in Tinystep, a parenting information startup.

In April 2017, eBay announced that it would sell its Indian subsidiary eBay.in to Flipkart and make a US$500 million cash investment in the company. eBay promoted that the partnership would eventually allow Flipkart to access eBay's network of international vendors, and vice versa, but these plans never actually came to fruit. In July 2017, Flipkart made an offer to acquire its main domestic competitor, Snapdeal, for around US$700-800 million. It was rejected by the company, which was seeking at least US$1 billion.

Flipkart held a 51% share of all Indian smartphone shipments in 2017, overtaking Amazon India (33%). Flipkart sold 1.3 million phones in 20 hours on 21 September alone for its Big Billion Days promotion, doubling the number sold on the first day of the event in 2016 (where it sold a total of 2.5 million phones in five days).

On 4 May 2018, it was reported that the US retail chain Walmart had won a bidding war with Amazon to acquire a majority stake in Flipkart for US$15 billion. On 9 May 2018, Walmart officially announced its intent to acquire a 77% controlling stake in Flipkart for US$16 billion, subject to regulatory approval. Following the proposed purchase, Flipkart founder Sachin Bansal will leave the company, while the remaining management will report to Marc Lore, CEO of Walmart eCommerce US; Walmart president Doug McMillon cited the "attractiveness" of the market, explaining that their purchase "is an opportunity to partner with the company that is leading transformation of eCommerce in the market".

The next day, eBay announced that it would sell its stake in Flipkart back to the company for approximately US$1.1 billion, and re-launch its own Indian operations. The company stated that "there is huge growth potential for e-commerce in India and significant opportunity for multiple players to succeed in India's diverse, domestic market."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipkart