Flipkart – a singular portal which triggered the e-commerce sector of India, had always a dynamic relationship with us consumers. Be it the vast multitude of products, the super easy user interface, the impeccable services provided, this unicorn start-up with 39.5% market share of India's e-commerce industry (as in 2017) became the foremost platform which we associated with e-shopping.
Founded by Sachin and Binny Bansal back in 2007, the past eleven years witnessed an exponential growth of this Bangalore based enterprise. With major acquisitions as Mime360.com , Chakpak Letsbuy, Myntra, Appiterate, and Jabong.com; the benchmark set by this company was a difficult one to surpass.


But, Flipkart too had its fair share of difficulties. Competing with e-commerce giant Amazon was a daunting task. Mounting losses, stagnant sales growth and hyper-aggressive competition had made a big dent. Sounds possible that a few year-olds start-up could even think of entering into such a competition? Well, October 2016 was a make or a break season.
Amazon’s Great Indian Sale was superseded by Flipkart’s Big Billion Days at the end of the season. After a short while, eBay acquisition was a bonus.
 

On Flipkart gaining the upper hand, Walmart’s acquisition was a big surprise. On May 2018, with the picking up of 77% stake for $16 billion, it was the world’s biggest purchase of an ecommerce company. It included $2 billion of fresh investment as Walmart looked to take on rival Amazon’s global expansion, pegging the value of Flipkart at $22 billion. The remaining 23% stake in Flipkart was held by cofounder and group chief executive officer Binny Bansal, Chinese Internet conglomerate Tencent, investment firm Tiger Global and software firm Microsoft Corp. 
With another Indian dream sold; post Walmart acquisition, Flipkart no longer invested in start-ups proactively as it used to do. “The company will now only invest in start-ups if it is strategic to its business”, was said by Binny Bansal. On the other hand, Flipkart’s biggest rival Amazon was on an investment spree in India, as a couple of months back it led a $12 million funding round in Acko Technologies, a digital-only insurance start-up headquartered in Mumbai.
A worry echoed in the many concerns raised over Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart is its implications for India’s countless small retail outlets, kirana stores and Indian businesses, whose margins would be pulverised by the giant retailer, once these become its vendors.


In the last two months Flipkart was privy to a series of changes, with the biggest one being the withdrawal of WS Retail products from its platform. Initially, WS Retail used to sell products exclusively- contributing over 40 percent of Flipkart’s volume. Following the government regulation that barred any particular seller on an online marketplace from contributing more than 25 per cent volume, Flipkart scaled down WS Retail.

 With the Walmart acquisition taking place, the stakeholders have been receiving their returns of their investments made on Flipkart; the most notable one being the Japanese investment giant, SoftBank. SoftBank had realised a 60% return, on its stake of 20% in Flipkart, by selling its shares for an estimated $4 billion to Walmart. Having earlier pumped in $2.5 billion in last August through its Vision Fund and Delta Fund, operating profit rose by more than 49%, boosted by gains from its $100 billion Vision Fund.

 

The last straw in this plethora of changes was the hiring of five new Vice Presidents to strengthen its management after the announcement of $16-billion Walmart deal. The executives include Dev Iyer, Srinivasulu Grandhi, Phanimohan Kalagara, Naren Ravula and Vineet Sethi. They have been appointed across functions such as fashion, corporate strategy, engineering, risk management, shared technology, and services group. The total number of VPs at Flipkart, including the new hires now stands at 28.
The Bengaluru-based online retailer is now looking to step into new categories like grocery and launch a loyalty programme under Flipkart Plus, to take on Amazon Prime.
As this marks the end of quite a long article, let us see what more this enterprise has in store for us in near future!