Every year in India there are thousands of startups that take their first step but due to the lack of business tactics and innovation they eventually fail. There are only a few who impact millions of lives and reach to the top.
On 9 May 2018, India’s largest e-commerce company Flipkart agreed to sell 77 percent stake to US retail giant Walmart for $16 billion. Walmart also plans to pump $2 billion (nearly Rs 13,000 crore) as fresh equity into Flipkart to strengthen its hold on the e-commerce firm.
Let us see the journey of the largest e-commerce company from scratch to sky:-
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Flipkart was founded 11 years ago in 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal. Although they share the same last name and come from Chandigarh but both Bansals are not related. A batch apart in IIT-Delhi, they became friends while working together at Amazon.
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Flipkart was started from a two-bedroom apartment in Bengaluru’s Koramangala area as an online bookstore. From those humble beginnings it would go on to become the country’s largest e-commerce player.
It opened its first office in Bengaluru in 2008 followed by offices in Delhi and Mumbai in 2009. Last month,Flipkart consolidated all its Bengaluru offices into one large campus sprawled across 8.3 lakh square feet. In 2011, Flipkart domiciled to Singapore, as it looked to woo foreign investors to fund rapid growth.
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Sachin was Flipkart CEO for nine years. In 2016, Binny Bansal took over as CEO as Sachin became executive chairman.
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Flipkart bought online apparel retailer Myntra in a deal pegged by sources at about $300 million in 2014, and another fashion retailer Jabong for $70 million in 2016.
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It bought payment startup PhonePe in 2016. In exchange for an equity stake in Flipkart, eBay agreed to make a $500 million cash investment in and sell its eBay.in business to Flipkart in 2017.
In terms of financial statistics, Flipkart Group’s consolidated loss attributable to owners of the company in fiscal 2017 widened to Rs 8,770 crore, from Rs 5,216 crore a year earlier. Consolidated revenue jumped 29 percent to Rs 19,855 crore in fiscal 2017.
