BENGALURU: Homegrown ecommerce marketplace Flipkart has received $600 million fund infusion from parent company Walmart. Flipkart confirmed the fundraising to this newspaper. As per reports, the company might receive another $400 million funds and new investors will also join the fresh fundraising round. Though Flipkart didn’t comment on this, it is said the funding will value the company at a premium of 5-10% from its current valuation. It was last valued at about $35 billion. Flipkart will use the funds to expand its operations. Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, Accel and Tiger Global Management in July exited the e-commerce firm and sold their shares to Walmart.
Earlier in July, Walmart in its filing said during the six months ended July 31, 2023, it paid $3.5 billion to acquire shares from certain Flipkart non-controlling interest holders. The US retail company paid about $1.4 billion to Tiger Global to buy its remaining shares in Flipkart. In 2018, Walmart paid about $16 billion for a 77% stake in the ecommerce firm, and according to Tracxn, Walmart now holds about 80.5% stake in the company.
Flipkart hived-off its payments entity PhonePe in December last year and in July, the company distributed cash payout worth $700 million to nearly 24,000 employees, including former employees. This is to compensate them for the separation of PhonePe from the ecommerce firm. In an earnings call in August, Walmart had said that both Flipkart and PhonePe are continuing to demonstrate impressive growth and Flipkart delivered strong GMV (gross merchandise value) and net sales growth as the core business continues to grow well.
The Flipkart Group includes group companies Flipkart, Myntra, Flipkart Wholesale, Flipkart Health+, and Cleartrip. It claims a registered user base of over 500 million, and there are over 14 lakh sellers on the platform, including Shopsy sellers. In FY23, Flipkart reported consolidated losses of Rs 4,890.6 crore and its consolidated net income stood at Rs 56,012.8 crore.
In its Flip Trends 2023, the homegrown ecommerce firm said that shoppers spent an average of 7 hours on Flipkart this year, and that the platform also witnessed over 41 million new customers up until November 2023. It also said that the company saw 100% growth in infant formula and premium skin care baby products which saw 50% growth in 2023.
