Flipkart

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Flipkart is an Indian e-commerce company, headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, and incorporated in Singapore as a private limited company. The company initially focused on online book sales before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, home essentials, groceries, and lifestyle products.

The service competes primarily with Amazon's Indian subsidiary and domestic rival Snapdeal.^[8][9] As of March 2017, Flipkart held a 39.5% market share of India's e-commerce industry.^[10] Flipkart has a dominant position in the apparel segment, bolstered by its acquisition of Myntra, and was described as being "neck and neck" with Amazon in the sale of electronics and mobile phones.^[11] Flipkart also owns PhonePe, a mobile payments service based on the Unified Payments Interface.

In August 2018, U.S.-based retail chain Walmart acquired an 77% controlling stake in Flipkart for US$16 billion, valuing Flipkart at around $20 billion.

History

Flipkart was founded in October 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and former Amazon employees. The company initially focused on online book sales with country-wide shipping. Flipkart slowly grew in prominence and was receiving 100 orders per day by 2008. In 2010, Flipkart acquired the Bangalore-based social book discovery service WeRead from Lulu.com.

Partnerships and acquisitions

In 2011, Flipkart acquired the digital distribution business Mime360.com and the digital content library of the Bollywood portal Chakpak. Following this acquisition, Flipkart launched their DRM-free online music store Flyte in 2012. Because of competition from free streaming sites, the site was unsuccessful and shut down in June 2013.

With its eyes on India's retail market, Flipkart acquired Letsbuy, an online electronics retailer, in 2012, and Myntra, an online fashion retailer, for $280 million in May 2014. Myntra continues to operate alongside Flipkart as a standalone subsidiary focusing on separate market segments. In April 2015, Flipkart acquired Appiterate, a Delhi-based mobile marketing automation firm. Flipkart stated that it would use Appiterate's technology to enhance its mobile services. In December 2015, Flipkart purchased a minority stake in the digital mapping provider MapmyIndia. In 2016, Flipkart acquired the online fashion retailer Jabong.com from Rocket Internet for $70 million and the UPI mobile payments startup PhonePe. In January 2017, Flipkart made a $2 million investment in TinyStep, a parenting information startup. Flipkart invested $35 million in Arvind Fashions Limited's newly formed subsidiary Arvind Youth Brands for a 27% stake in the company. Arvind Youth Brands owns Flying Machine.

Flipkart Wholesale recently launched a digital platform for kiranas and MSMEs. In October 2020, Flipkart acquired a 7.8% stake in Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail for $204 million.