Flipkart Now Valued At 19% Higher With Walmart’s $1.2 Bn Round
The Flipkart Group now gets valued at $24.9 billion after Walmart Inc led a$1.2 billion investment in the former. This values the company about 19% higher than what it sold a majority stake to the US retail behemoth
This round was being participated by a group of existing shareholders, as per a statement by Walmart. It also added that the investment would be funded in two tranches during this fiscal year. The other existing backers include Tiger Global, Tencent and Accel. This commitment comes at a time when the Indian online retail battle is being redrawn with Reliance Jio’s plans to leverage its telecom reach to propel online commerce.
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This funding from Walmart already owns around 80% in Flipkart, the Bengaluru-based online retailer, which would be taking its shareholding likely by one percent or so, said people with knowledge of the matter. This is also seen as the largest fundraising for Flipkart since it was being acquired by Walmart two years ago for $16 billion. Flipkart was then valued at $21 billion, which made it one of the foreign investments in India, also making it the largest foreign investment in India’s fledging internet ecosystem.
CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said that Flipkart leads in electronics and fashion, and they are also rapidly accelerating share in other general merchandise categories and groceries as well. He continued saying that Flipkart would continue bringing innovations in order to bring the next 200 million Indian shoppers online.
It’s interesting to note that the backing of Walmart coincides with Mukesh Ambani led Jio Platforms that has accumulated $15 billion from Facebook, private equity firms like Silver Lake, KKR, and a lot more. Recently, Bloomberg had reported that Google was also in talks to plough in around $4 billion in Jio Platforms, that would be further giving it an opportunity to transform itself into a tech behemoth. Also, e-commerce offering JioMart has launched in around 200 cities in India.
Also, Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO had committed an additional $1 billion to the Indian market to digitise around million small businesses. Various analysts have said that Flipkart would be needing the capital to scale up the business moving forward. CEO and President of Walmart International, Judith McKenna, said that Flipkart continues to leverage its culture of innovation in order to accelerate growth and also enable millions of customers, sellers, merchants and small businesses to prosper and also be a part of India’s digital transformation.
Also, as per a statement by Flipkart, it has already surpassed 1.5 billion visits per month and has also reported 45% growth in monthly active customers and also a 30% growth in transactions per customer for the fiscal year 2020.
