Walmart’s on verge of buying India’s Flipkart

Walmart’s planned acquisition would value Flipkart the Indian online marketplace e-commerce group close to $20bn.

Flipkart found in 2007 by former Amazon employee Sachin and Binny Bansal and backed by New York-based fund Tiger Global management and Japanese tech and telecoms conglomerate SoftBank, although it has overtaken homegrown rivals, it faces a strong challenge from  Amazon, which entered India in 2013 after committing $5bn  of capital to India.

Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba has other plans to take on both Flipkart and Amazon through a 40 per cent stake in Paytm, based outside Delhi.

Indian e-commerce sales in 2017, shot up to $21bn out of which Flipkart accounted for 39 per cent of Indian e-commerce sales against Amazon’s 30 per cent.

Walmart has already completed due diligence procedures and is hoping to acquire a stake of 86% or more in Flipkart with an investment of $12 billion.