Flipkart has raised $20mn from Tiger Global LLC in its Series C round and this takes the total amount raised to $31 million.
The funding will be used for marketing initiatives and the company earlier raised $10mn from Tiger Global (and Accel Capital). Essentially, Flipkart needs to go beyond the tier-1 cities and penetrate deeply into tier-2 and tier-3 cities (which is where they need to get the next generation of buyer/sellers hooked onto the service).
We earlier shared the traffic of ecommerce sites in India and eBay clearly leads the race, followed by Homeshop18.
Traffic of Ecommerce Websites In IndiaHaving said that, Flipkart is making way for a niche startup to come and dethrone it’s (earlier) positioning from being a ‘great site for book lovers’ (circle of life, anyone?).
Is Flipkart an IPO story in making? Or a sweet deal for Amazon to enter India (they have been testing Indian waters) and acquire Flipkart (whose IP lies in backend support system)?
Given that Flipkart isn’t yet profitable (far from being one), the only game is to either hit the public market (so that VCs can exit) or get acquired by a giant like Amazon (so that VCs can exit).
At total fund of $31mn, how much do you think is the Flipkart valuation? Do share ‘your guess’ in the comment section.
At the first UnPluggd event, Sachin Bansal (Flipkart cofounder) shared the Flipkart story on how they didn’t plan to really build a business of this scale (and instead, an affiliate business of sorts).
Do watch the video
Recommended Discussion: Stale Internet Growth in India -Is Offline Promotion the Way to Market Internet Business?
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