India’s leading eCommerce marketplace Flipkart has announced its acquisition of IT and mobile repair services company F1 Info Solutions.
As a part of the acquisition, all the owned and franchised centres of F1 Info Solutions across India will now come under the umbrella of Jeeves — a Flipkart company that serves as a one-stop service point for large and small home appliances and other electronics.
The company suggests that the move is aimed at expanding Flipkart’s offerings across the entire lifecycle of mobiles, IT products and consumer electronics — from sales till the point of repair services.
Commenting on the new development, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said,
Flipkart is the top destination for mobile phones in India and having created the market for online smartphones from scratch, we’re now taking our offerings several notches higher. F1 Info Solutions is an entrenched player in this segment, and its expertise and scale is a big capability add-on for us. We’re delighted to welcome them to Flipkart. Ultimately, we want to give our customers a comprehensive service ecosystem that takes care of the repair and service needs of all their products.
Shammi Moza, co-founder and CEO of F1 Info Solutions will be joining the eCommerce company as a Senior Director. In his new role, Moza will report to Abhijit Upadhye, who currently serves as the Head Of Jeeves and the Vice President at Flipkart.
Founded in 2012, F1 Info Solutions has around 158 owned and franchised centres and close to 1,000 employees. The company says that it handles more than 50,000 service calls every month across the country. F1 is a service partner of brands like Apple, Samsung, HP, Lenovo, Sony and Asus, among others.
The development comes at a time when the Bangalore-based company is gearing up to sell refurbished smartphones. As per the reports, Flipkart is all set to sell certified refurbished smartphones on the online marketplace and offline outlets.
The company is currently said to be in talks with distributors for offline sale. With such move, the eCommerce company is aiming to lower high return rates of handsets.