Flipkart is an e-commerce platform, which allows all kinds of product listing and selling. Any business can list their products and sell them. The shipping and other formalities are taken care of by the platform itself. It has a large user base, which enables for easy promotion and branding of products. It provides an easy and delightful shopping experience for its users.
Founders
Flipkart, an e-commerce retailing platform based out of Bengaluru, Karnataka was founded in October 2007 by IIT Delhi alumni Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal and presently the CEO of Flipkart is Krishnan Kalyanmurthy.
Flipkart was recently acquired by the US retailer Walmart, on 10 May 2018, for a whopping deal of $US 16 Billion.
Funding
Flipkart raised a total funding amount of $7.3 Billion through a series of funding from various investors over the years.
- It received a series A funding of $1 million on Oct 1, 2009, invested by Accel.
- It rose a funding of $10 Million in Series B funding on June 16, 2010, invested by Tiger Global Management.
- It raised $20 Million in Series C funding on June 16, 2011, led by Tiger Global Management.
- It raised $150 Million in Series D funding on Aug 24, 2012.
- It rose a funding of $200 Million in Series E funding on June 10, 2013, led by Naspers, Tiger Global Management, Accel, ICONIQ Capital.
- It again raised a funding of $160 Million in Series E funding on Oct 8, 2013, invested by Vulcan Capital, Tiger Global Management, Sofina, Morgan Stanley, Dragoneer Investment Group.
- It raised a funding of $210 Million in Series F funding on May 26, 2014, led DST Global
- It raised a funding of $1 Billion in Series G funding on July 29, 2014, invested by Tiger Global Management, Naspers.
- It received a series H funding of $700 million on Dec 21, 2014, invested by Steadview Capital.
- It rose a funding of $700 Million in a private equity round of funding on July 28, 2015, invested by Tiger Global Management and Steadview Capital.
- It again raised $1.4 Billion in a private equity round of funding on April 10, 2017, led by eBay, Tencent Holdings, Microsoft.
- It raised $71 Million in a private equity round of funding on June 26, 2017.
- It rose a funding of $1.5 Billion in a private equity round of funding on Aug 10, 2017.
- It again raised a funding of $1 Billion in secondary market funding on Aug 10, 2017.
- It rose a funding of $10 Billion in Debt Financing funding on Sep 18, 2017, led Axis Bank.
Business Model
Flipkart is an e-commerce platform for listing and selling products in India. It is a B2C shopping portal and has various sources of revenue generation. It has over 26 Million registered users and over 8 million daily visits. It offers 20 million products in over 70 categories.
- Flipkart Web portal and app – Here the sellers list their products and buyers can place orders and Flipkart keeps a middleman commission on every sold product and the range varies from 5% to 20%.
- Supply chain – The logistics services were initially meant for shipping only Flipkart’s products but then it went on to shift other platforms products too.
- Advertisements – It has a good users base, which attracts a lot of advertisement opportunities through ad banners and getting brand partners like Xiaomi, which becomes a good revenue source.
- Promotion of Products – Flipkart also charges a fee for the promotion of various products from brands and also various physical products.
Competitors
In the Indian market Paytm, Snapdeal, Jabong are competitors of Flipkart in the e-commerce sector, whereas Amazon, eBay, Alibaba Group are international competitors.
Acquisitions
- Flipkart acquired Trivone Digital services Pvt. Ltd. On Nov 2011.
- It acquired fashion e-commerce giant Myntra in May 2014.
- Acquired a mobile ad platform, AdIQuity on May 2015.
- It acquired a mobile marketing platform, Appiterate on Apr 2015.
- Flipkart acquired a payment services platform, FX Mart Private Ltd. On Sep, 2015.
- It acquired PhonePe in Apr 2016, the digital wallet application used to transfer money and many other applications.
- It acquired F1 Info Solutions & Services on Sep 2017, which is a provider of spare parts management, warranty and help desk support services.