Flipkart Indian e-commerce, raises $1 Billion
India’s largest e-commerce firm, Flipkart, has confirmed that it managed to raise $1 billion in its latest round of fund-raising, thus becoming by far the largest venture investment ever received by an Indian Internet company.
Globally, the amount raised would rank second only to Uber’s recent $1.2 billion windfall.
Flipkart is an online marketplace that offers more than 70 categories of goods and services, from electronics to books. The site says it has over four million daily visits and 22 million registered users, in a country where roughly 250 million people are online.
The investment firm Tiger Global and Naspers, a South African firm that invests primarily in e-commerce and media companies, co-led the latest fund-raising round. Other investors included the venture capital firm Accel Partners, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Sofina of Belgium and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC.
The announcement comes only months after Flipkart raised $210 million from a group of investors that represent four of the eight firms that participated in the latest round: Tiger Global, Naspers, DST Global and Iconiq Capital. Before the latest round, Flipkart had raised roughly $770 million since it was founded in 2007.
Indian e-commerce has been growing at rapid pace, thanks in large part to a major infusion of international investment in the last year. At least half a dozen other leading Indian e-commerce sites have announced major fund-raising rounds in the last few months. Snapdeal, Flipkart’s main rival, raised $233 million this year, with about half coming from the American giant eBay. Kunal Bahl, Snapdeal’s co-founder, says the company is aiming to hold an initial public offering within the next year or two.
Flipkart’s co-founder, Sachin Bansal, told Press Trust of India that it was not considering an I.P.O. “We are not thinking about it. We have not settled on a business model that we can take public,” he said.
Estimates of the total worth of India’s online retail industry vary greatly, but most acknowledge that it represents less than 1 percent of the country’s $500 billion retail market, which is mostly cash-driven. Comparatively, China’s e-commerce sales are expected to top $180 billion this year, and one company alone, the Alibaba Group, is expected to go public with an estimated value of $200 billion.
Source: NYT
