E-commerce marketplace Flipkart raises USD 2.4 billion
Flipkart
Founders: Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal
Founded in: 2007
Financing status: USD 2.4 billion for undisclosed funding round in 2017
India’s leading e-commerce marketplace Flipkart has raised USD 2.4 billion from SoftBank’s Vision Fund. According to a press statement, SoftBank will own a 20% stake in the company.
Flipkart was founded in 2007 by IIT Delhi alumni Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal who were previously both software engineers at Amazon.
Flipkart is one of India’s largest e-commerce marketplaces with a registered customer base of over 100 million. In the 10 years since it started, Flipkart has come to offer over 80 million products across more than 80 categories including smartphones, books, media, consumer electronics, furniture, fashion and lifestyle items.
Flipkart is known to offer services like cash on delivery (COD), no cost equated monthly installments (EMI) and a 10-day replacement policy. But, its most famous service offerings are the guaranteed one-day-delivery of goods across 50 cities and the same-day-delivery across 13 cities. The company claims to have 100,000 registered sellers on the platform.
In 2014, Flipkart acquired Myntra, an online marketplace for fashion and lifestyle products. In turn, Myntra acquired online shopping platform Jabong in 2016. These two acquisitions helped Flipkart become India’s largest fashion platform as well.
Flipkart will use this fresh investment to solidify its position as the market leader.
(Top photo from iFeng website)
