Following months of rumors, Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart has confirmed that it has raised $1.4 billion in new funding at a post-money valuation of $11.6..
Following months of rumors, Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart has confirmed that it has raised $1.4 billion in new funding at a post-money valuation of $11.6 billion to battle Amazon and Alibaba. The deal includes some big name strategic investors: China’s Tencent, eBay and Microsoft, which joint existing Flipkart backers that include Tiger Global, Naspers, Accel and DST Global.
The investment will also see Flipkart take control of eBay India, a second-tier e-commerce player in India, which will remain an independent e-commerce site. Separately eBay, which is a minor investor in rival Snapdeal, has inked an international deal with eBay to cross-promote products between the services.
Flipkart has now raised $4.65 billion from investors to date, according to Crunchbase. Its most recent round prior to today was $700 million in July 2015 , which valued the company at a much higher $15 billion. While that’s a significant down round, which many had been predicting, this investment is the single largest round of financing from an India tech startup.
But, regardless, times have changed at the company. Flipkart shuffled its leadership in January when former Tiger Global executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy became its CEO, and it has been hard to keep up with the sheer volume of rumors coming out since then.
Last month, Flipkart was reported to have raised $1 billion from investors with plans for a further billion to come later. It has also been linked with a merger deal with rival Snapdeal, a move media claim is motivated by Snapdeal investor Softbank , in a bid to bolster its competitive edge against Amazon, while giving Snapdeal a springboard to bounce back from a series of struggles that have included 500-plus layoffs in February.
