Journey Of The Ecommerce Giant Flipkart

Journey Of The Ecommerce Giant Flipkart

Indian ecommerce Industry that worth for US$38.5 billion in 2017 which have Global and local ecommerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart, is continuously receiving huge investments from companies like Softbak, Facebook, and walmart. Walmart has acquired flipkart which captured around 39.5% market share in india.

Flipkart which was founded by Binnay Bansal and Sachin Bansal both were alumni of the Indian institute of technology and started flipkart in October 2007, 12 years ago and founders have already worked in Amzon before starting flipkart. In the beginning they used to sell book door to door on COD to win the trust of Indian Consumers, the idea was simple that consumers could shop online and get book delivered to their doorstep.

That time everybody doesn’t have access to the internet so their initial stages were not at all easy, they only used to have a two bedroom apartment in bengalur as their office.

By 2008 flipkart was receiving 100 orders per day, In the second year of flipkart they got their first full-time employee in ambur lyyappa and in the same year in October, Accel partners invested US$ 1 million in Flipkart then few months later they received US$ 10 million investment by Tiger Global.

Year 2010 was an important year for flipkart because that year flipkart added other product range to it’s website like electronics and mobile phones and in the same year flipkart launched it’s logistics arm Ekart.

Flipkart was all pumped up now with huge investments, In 2010 Flipkart acquired the Bangalore-based social book discovery service WeRead and In late 2011, flipkart made other acquisitions which includes Mime360.com and Chakpak. In February 2012 flipkart tried to start DRM-Free Online music store but failed due to the high competition present in the market.

In 2012 flipkart also started selling products in Fashion, perfumes, watches, menswear, toys, posters and Baby care. Flipkart acquired letsbuy an online electronic leader and myntra a fashion focused website for US$290 million in 2012 and 2014 respectively, While myntra focused on fashion-conscious market, flipkart focused on mainstream Indian market.

In the same year when flipkart acquired myntra, they started the india’s largest online sale- ‘Big Billion Days’. In 2016 flipkart crossed many milestones, they crossed 100 million registered customers on their website and became the first Indian mobile app to crossed 50 million users and in the same year they acquired PhonePe a UPI Based payments start up.

In 2017 flipkart celebrated it’s 10 years, Flipkart raised US$ 1.4 billion ! From tencent, ebay and Microsoft, Kalyan Krishnamurthy became the new CEO of Flipkart after binny bansal and Phone pe crossed 10 million downloads that year.

And at last but not the least, In August 2018 walmart acquired 77% controlling stake in flipkart for US$16 billion, following the announcement of walmart, ebay also announced that it would sell it’s stake in flipakrt back to the company and Softbank also sold it’s stake in flipkart to walmart.

Sachin bansal also resigned and write a letter to it’s employees. After that He said he will be taking a break and will be focusing on some personal things. Well, he has done a wonderful job and we should fell proud on him that he is the founder of india’s largest e commerce store and Binny bansal is still in the company.

Well after all this, flipakart has started hurting walmart as the shares of walmart have lost around US$8 billion and Amazon is also giving though competition, Amazon's gross sale is 21% higher than flipkart but flipkart still generates more revenue.