BENGALURU: Amidst heightened border tensions between China and India, homegrown e-commerce major Flipkart has got a fresh $62.8 million investment from the Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings, showed regulatory filings sourced from business intelligence platform, paper.vc.
The fund has been raised through Flipkart’s Singapore-based parent entity and is likely a part of the larger $1.2 billion round which was announced by the e-tailer in July.
The fundraise also comes at a time when the Chinese tech investors including Tencent, Alibaba and Bytedance are moving their headquarters to Singapore amid a furore in the US and India over data privacy and control issues by the Chinese government, which could potentially prove to be a national security threat.
The Indian government has also issued new Foreign Direct Investment guidelines requiring prior approval of the regulators for investments from countries that share a border with India. App developer Tencent
currently is the largest minority stakeholder in Flipkart (4-5 per cent stake) valued at over $1 billion.
Tencent’s popular game, Player Unknown’s Battle Underground (PUBG) was recently banned by the Indian government which led to at least 2 per cent share drop intra-day in the Chinese company, amounting to $14 billion.
India accounts for a minimal revenue for Tencent for its PUBG app, but has nearly 35 per cent of the overall app downloads, according to data from Sensor Tower.
The US retail behemoth currently holds 81 per cent stake in Flipkart valued at over $18 billion. Walmart’s recent announcement of over $1 billion funds infusion in Flipkart was slated to happen in two tranches this fiscal year.
The e-commerce firm is trying to edge out rivals Amazon and JioMart in the tightly contested e-commerce space especially as demand peaks up during the upcoming festival season sales.
Earlier, Flipkart announced that it will create 70,000 direct jobs and hire lakhs of indirect roles in India to cater to the increased demand.
Larger round
Flipkart had raised $1.2 billion in July in a round led by its majority stakeholder Walmart and others.