flipkart case study wikipedia

Flipkart Case Study: The Rise Of Indian E-commerce Giant

Supti Nandi

Updated on: April 8, 2024

When it comes to success stories, the Flipkart Case Study has been the most anticipated one! Reason? A company from its humble beginnings rose to fame so immensely that now it has become synonymous with online shopping. Just like Google is synonymous with search engines and Paytm is synonymous with online payment in India!

Let me tell you that when a brand becomes synonymous with a process, then that’s solid evidence of success. 

Coming back to the point, Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce giant changed how you shop online. From its start, facing challenges, to becoming a big player in online retail, Flipkart’s journey is fascinating.

In this Flipkart Case Study, we will look at its early days, growth strategies, and the impact it had on how Indians shop. Also, its key moments include its joining forces with Walmart and still, it continues to evolve.

So, without any delay, let’s go through the Flipkart Case Study to understand  Flipkart’s rise and how it shaped the e-commerce landscape in India.

(A) What is Flipkart? A Brief Overview

Flipkart Private Limited, an Indian multinational e-commerce giant, has its headquarters in Bangalore and is incorporated as a private limited company in Singapore. The company’s journey began with a primary focus on online book sales. However, as it evolved, Flipkart expanded its product range to include diverse categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, home essentials, groceries, and lifestyle products.

In the competitive landscape of the Indian e-commerce industry, Flipkart is a key player, directly competing with major entities like Amazon India and local rival Snapdeal. 

Note: We have already explained “ Why did Snapdeal fail? Complete Snapdeal Case Study ” in detail. Check out the article for depth information. 

As of March 2023, Flipkart held a significant market share, boasting 51% dominance in the country’s e-commerce sector.

One notable aspect contributing to Flipkart’s success is its strategic acquisition of Myntra, which has solidified its position in the apparel segment. This move has been pivotal in establishing Flipkart as a dominant force in the online fashion market.

Moreover, Flipkart has successfully positioned itself as a strong contender against Amazon in the sale of electronics and mobile phones, showcasing its versatility and adaptability in catering to diverse consumer needs.

We will explain it in more detail in the upcoming sections.

For now, let’s have a look at Flipkart’s profile-

In essence, Flipkart’s trajectory from an online book retailer to a multifaceted e-commerce giant is marked by strategic expansions, key acquisitions, and robust competition in the dynamic Indian market.

(B) History of Flipkart

Flipkart’s foundation in India was laid in October 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, both alumni of IIT Delhi and former employees of Amazon. The duo initiated their venture from a modest two-bedroom apartment in Koramangala, Bangalore. 

Fueled by their vision to revolutionize online retail, the initial investment of INR 2 lakh from each founder’s family set the stage for what would become a transformative journey.

Starting as an online bookstore with a nationwide shipping approach, Flipkart strategically focused on the sale of books. The company gradually gained prominence, processing 100 orders per day by 2008. This early success laid the groundwork for Flipkart’s expansion beyond books into diverse product categories.

Now, let’s briefly look at the history of Flipkart-

The journey from a small startup to an e-commerce giant included significant milestones such as the acquisition of We Read in 2010, further diversifying Flipkart’s offerings. This period marked the foundation of Flipkart’s presence in the Indian market, and its commitment to customer satisfaction and innovation paved the way for its subsequent growth, mergers, and acquisitions in the years to come.

(C) Growth Strategies: How did Flipkart rise in the Indian e-commerce market?

Flipkart rose in the Indian market by opting for numerous effective strategies. Go through the following table and you will get to know it-

Imagine a journey that begins with a small team, determined to redefine how people shop online. That’s the story of Flipkart, and it’s a tale filled with strategic moves and innovative thinking.

From the outset, customer satisfaction was at the forefront of Flipkart’s strategy. They understood the importance of competitive pricing, a user-friendly interface, and reliable delivery to win over the hearts of Indian shoppers. Introducing the “Cash on Delivery” option addressed trust concerns in a market where online payments were met with skepticism.

But Flipkart didn’t stop there. 

They introduced groundbreaking events like “Big Billion Days,” turning ordinary shopping into a festival of massive discounts. Recognizing the shift towards mobile internet usage, they optimized their platform for mobile devices, making shopping accessible to millions on the go.

Building a robust logistics network became a cornerstone for Flipkart. Timely delivery, coupled with innovative programs like “Flipkart Assured,” ensured quality products reached customers swiftly. The transition from an inventory-based model to a marketplace allowed third-party sellers to join in, expanding Flipkart’s product catalog without huge inventory investments.

Strategic acquisitions, including Myntra, Jabong, and PhonePe, strengthened their position in fashion and digital payments. Partnerships for exclusive smartphone launches boosted their visibility while securing funding from investors like Tiger Global and SoftBank fueled their growth, enabling them to compete globally.

However, every story has its challenges. Flipkart faced setbacks from competition, changing regulations, and allegations of unfair practices. Regulatory scrutiny became a part of their narrative as the government examined their business model.

In a pivotal moment, Walmart stepped into the story, acquiring a majority stake in Flipkart for $16 billion in 2018. This move not only injected additional resources but also brought global expertise to Flipkart’s journey.

From adapting to changing trends, embracing new technologies, and facing challenges head-on, to the transformative Walmart acquisition – Flipkart’s story is a testament to resilience, innovation, and the pursuit of customer satisfaction in the ever-evolving landscape of e-commerce.

(D) Impact of Flipkart on Indian Retail: How has it disrupted the traditional retail models?

Flipkart has significantly disrupted traditional retail models in India, reshaping the landscape and transforming how consumers shop. You have witnessed it too! Let’s look at the impact of Flipkart on the retail landscape of India-

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) contends that Flipkart’s practices have adversely affected small retailers. Many traditional retail businesses have struggled to compete, resulting in job losses and a decline in the sector.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) is currently investigating the allegations against Flipkart. If found guilty, fines or changes in business practices may be imposed. The government is also considering new regulations to promote fair competition in the e-commerce sector.

(E) Business Review: How Flipkart is Performing Businesswise?

Why do we always analyze the companies from a business perspective? You may wonder! Well, this is a crucial aspect of the case studies. It immensely helps investors, stakeholders, and decision-makers.

Looking at Flipkart’s conditions from a business perspective offers insights into its strategies, financial stability, market presence, and customer service approaches.

So, let’s look at the business aspects of Flipkart-

From the table, it’s evident that Flipkart holds a substantial market valuation of $37.6 billion, boasting a dominant 51% market share in India. The major shareholder is Walmart, holding an 80.5% stake. 

Despite a significant revenue increase from Rs.51,176 crore (FY22) to Rs.56,013 crore (FY23), expenses also escalated from Rs.54,580 crore to Rs.60,858.5 crore.

The company reported losses of Rs.3,371.2 crore (FY22) and Rs.4,890.6 crore (FY23). This data provides a snapshot of Flipkart’s financial landscape, showcasing its valuation, market share, shareholder structure, revenue, expenses, and losses in the specified fiscal years.

(F) Competitive Landscape of Flipkart

Flipkart operates in a highly competitive e-commerce landscape in India facing fierce competition from various players. The key rivals include-

• Amazon India: One of the major competitors, Amazon has a substantial presence in India, offering a diverse range of products and services. The battle for market share between Flipkart and Amazon is a defining aspect of the e-commerce landscape. We have thoroughly explained Amazon vs Flipkart . You can check that article for detailed information.
• Snapdeal: Though not as dominant as Flipkart and Amazon, Snapdeal remains a significant player, especially in certain product categories. The competition with Snapdeal adds to the dynamic nature of the market.
• New Entrants: The e-commerce sector in India has witnessed the entry of new players, both domestic and international, intensifying the rivalry and driving innovation in the industry.

Every year, Flipkart hosts a huge event called the “Big Billion Days” where they offer big discounts and special deals to attract lots of shoppers.

Flipkart’s focus is on making customers happy. They keep prices low, make the website easy to use, and deliver orders reliably. 

One smart move they made was changing how they sell things – instead of owning all the products, they let other sellers join their platform, giving customers more choices without needing a huge warehouse.

Along the way, Flipkart made important friends by acquiring companies like Myntra, Jabong, and PhonePe. These additions helped Flipkart become better in fashion and digital payments.

To keep up in this fast-changing world, Flipkart also uses technology well, especially on mobile phones. They invest a lot in making sure orders reach customers on time. Despite facing challenges, 

Flipkart’s story shows how they adapt and compete, making them a big player in India’s online shopping tale!

(G) Challenges Faced by Flipkart

Here are some of the tough challenges that Flipkart faced while commencing its operations in India-

These challenges reflect the dynamic nature of the e-commerce industry and the need for strategic agility by Flipkart.

(H) Post-Acquisition Developments of Flipkart

Let’s go through the post-acquisition developments of Flipkart following Walmart’s acquisition-

Thus, Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart brought both opportunities and challenges. Simultaneously, it immensely helped in shaping the e-commerce ecosystem in India and impacted millions of consumers.

(I) Wrapping Up the Flipkart Case Study

In a nutshell, Flipkart’s journey from a small startup in 2007 to an Indian e-commerce giant is marked by strategic innovation, customer-centricity, and adaptability. Pioneering events like “Big Billion Days,” embracing a marketplace model, and strategic acquisitions have been pivotal. 

The company’s commitment to customer satisfaction, technological integration, and expansion into diverse segments showcase its resilience . The acquisition by Walmart in 2018 added global expertise, propelling Flipkart to a $37.6 billion valuation. 

As it ventures into new territories, Flipkart’s story remains a testament to its impact on India’s retail landscape and its ability to evolve with changing times!

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Flipkart - The Journey of India's Leading E-Commerce Website

Rishabh Rathi , Manisha Mishra

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations.

Don’t you think online buying and selling have become an essential part of our lives? It was youth and adults who initially relied on the Internet to buy products at affordable prices with amazing return policies and guarantees; it was a trend back then.

Nowadays, eCommerce websites have made online shopping a common practice for people of all ages. Flipkart is India's most popular e-commerce website, known for its innovative business model.

Flipkart is the leading Indian eCommerce website founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007 . The company is headquartered in Bengaluru , India. This Indian eCommerce store has brought a revolution to the Indian e-retail industry.

Let's now delve into the success story of Flipkart and learn about Flipkart's founders, subsidiaries, owners, business and revenue model, and more.

Flipkart: Company Highlights

Flipkart - About Flipkart - Industry and Target Market Size Flipkart - Founders and Team Flipkart - Startup Story Flipkart - Mission Flipkart - Name, Tagline, and Logo Flipkart - Parent Organization Flipkart - Subsidiaries Flipkart - Business Model and Revenue Model Flipkart - Partnerships Flipkart - Funding and Investors Flipkart - ESOPs Flipkart - Growth and Revenues Flipkart - Product And Service Flipkart - Investments Flipkart - Mergers and Acquisitions Flipkart - Challenges Flipkart - Competitors Flipkart - Future Plans

Flipkart - About

Flipkart, an Indian eCommerce company founded in 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, has become a household name. Based in Bengaluru, India, Flipkart has been selling a vast range of products online, similar to Amazon.

Its phenomenal marketing strategies have attracted the attention of retail giant Walmart, which acquired Flipkart for $16 billion in May 2018.

Along with the imposing worldwide market share that Walmart has in the retail industry, the Sam Walton -founded company is also famous for its inspirational business model.

In the initial years, Flipkart focused on selling books, but today the catalog covers categories like electronics, fashion, home essentials, groceries, and lifestyle products. More than 1 billion people have shopped on Flipkart, making the e-commerce giant the leading e-retailer in India.

Flipkart also has subsidiaries like Myntra , eBay, Ekart, Jeeves, and more. Flipkart also launched Shopsy on July 2, 2021, which is designed to behave like an app that will encourage the nation's entrepreneurs to reap all the benefits of digital eCommerce that come their way without investments.

Today, Flipkart has over 100 million registered users, 100+ thousand sellers, and 21+ state-of-the-art warehouses.

It also boasts about 10+ million daily page visits and over 8 million shipments per month. Flipkart currently works as a subsidiary of Walmart .

The current CEO of Flipkart Group is Kalyan Krishnamurthy .

Flipkart acquired a 100% stake in Walmart India, which operates the Best Price cash-and-carry business.

Thus, we are launching Flipkart Wholesale. This step helped Flipkart strengthen its hold on the grocery, food, and fashion businesses, which are stated to be highly competitive in this dynamic environment.

The launch of Flipkart Wholesale will be initiated in August, thus piloting the services for the grocery and fashion categories.

"The Best Price operation will continue to run as it is. In terms of legal structure, currently, Walmart India is a separate entity within the Flipkart Group", Said Sameer Aggarwal, CEO, Walmart India.

The role of Kirana Stores and MSMEs in India's retail ecosystem is vital. With a focus on meeting their needs, Flipkart Wholesale is all set to widen opportunities at a significant value. By leveraging their expertise and knowledge, the team is breaking new norms and helping Indian businesses grow and succeed.

Earlier in 2018, Flipkart was acquired by Walmart for $16 billion , which was the largest online e-commerce acquisition in the world to the present. Flipkart launched its wholesale unit with a presence in the fashion and grocery categories.

“With the launch of Flipkart Wholesale , we will now extend our capabilities across technology, logistics and finance to small businesses across the country,” Said Kalyan Krishnamurthy , CEO, Flipkart Group

At present, Flipkart Wholesale will be headed by Adarsh Menon (a veteran at Flipkart). In order to ensure smooth functioning and transition, Sameer Aggarwal (CEO, Walmart India) will remain with the company for a while.

Flipkart - Industry and Target Market Size

Flipkart uses an undifferentiated targeting strategy since people of all demographies purchase items online, which are available to everyone where delivery is possible.

National and multinational e-commerce companies are giving neck-to-neck competition to each other, due to which their positioning is very important. Flipkart has positioned itself as a trustworthy and customer-friendly eCommerce brand.

The online retail industry market is of a size of around $60 billion . It is expected to reach $200 billion by the year 2026. The Indian and global e-commerce industry is on the verge of exponential growth, and the introduction of high-speed internet has fueled the process across the nation.

Before the pandemic, India was one of the most attractive eCommerce markets globally, expected to deliver a 30% CAGR over a six-year time horizon, according to a report by RedSeer Consulting.

Flipkart - Founders and Team

Flipkart was founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in May 2007.

Kalyan Krishnamurthy is the CEO of the company. He was appointed CEO of the company in January 2017, when he replaced Binny Bansal.

Sachin Bansal

Sachin Bansal is the co-founder of Flipkart. After obtaining a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from IIT Delhi, Sachin started with Amazon as a Senior Software Engineer after a brief stint at Techspan. He then left his job at Amazon and co-founded Flipkart.

At Flipkart, he managed the positions of CEO and Chairman before resigning in 2018 following Walmart's major acquisition of Flipkart, where the American multinational company acquired around 77% stakes in the Indian e-commerce company. Bansal eventually started Navi with Ankit Agarwal and is currently serving as Chairman at Navi. The net worth of Sachin Bansal is currently at $1.30 billion, as of the Forbes report of 2022.

Binny Bansal

An IIT Delhi alumnus, much like Sachin, Binny completed his Bachelor's in Computer Science and Engineering, after which he co-founded Flipkart. Binny Bansal was the COO and CEO of Flipkart.

Sachin was the CEO since the inception of Flipkart,, and in 2016, Binny Bansal took over as CEO while Sachin Bansal became the executive chairman of the company. However, Binny also resigned from Flipkart in 2018 due to personal misconduct allegations against Flipkart.

Bansal also served as the group CEO of the organization. Moreover, Binny has also served as a board advisor at Acko, Blackbuck, GreyOrange, Udhyam Learning, and more such companies. Binny Bansal is currently serving as a co-founder and executive chairman at xto10x Technologies.

The net worth of Binny Bansal is also $1.30 billion, as reported by Forbes in 2022. Apart from serving in the SaaS consulting startup, Bansal was also on the Board of Directors of PhonePe.

Binny Bansal sold stakes worth $264 million (nearly Rs 2,060 crore) to Tencent, as per official documents checked out on June 13, 2022.

The documents revealed that the transaction had already been done in October 2021 and was shared only at the start of FY22.

At the end of the transaction, Binny Bansal was holding around 1.84% of the stakes, while Tencent was currently holding 0.72%. The Chinese tech giant is holding around 4-5% stakes in Flipkart Pte, which is the Singapore-based parent of Flipkart.

Binny Bansal has a history of selling stakes. He had previously sold stakes worth $90 million in 2019 to Tiger Global across two deals. Bansal also sold shares worth $76 million to FIT Holdings SARL, the Luxembourg entity that is owned and operated by Walmart, in the same year.

Flipkart's SVP, Growth and Monetisation, and Shopsy Head, Prakash Sikaria, are exiting after the festival sales, as per reports dated July 22, 2022. Sikaria also headed other verticals like recommerce and travel, which will now be taken over by Adarsh Menon.

On the other hand, Flipkart Wholesale, the B2B e-commerce business of Flipkart, will be headed by Koteshwar LN. However, Flipkart has yet to decide who to appoint for the other functions that Sikaria handled.

Flipkart currently operates with an employee strength of 33,000+ employees.

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Flipkart - Startup Story

The IIT-Delhi graduates, Sachin and Binny Bansal, were employees at Amazon when they began thinking of building their own company in India.

Though Sachin was an employee working with Amazon for some time, Binny was referred to join the company by Sachin, and the former appeared to be quite bored with the company.

It was like a "12 to 3 job or something" for Binny Bansal, who decided to quit the company as soon as Sachin and he emerged with the idea of establishing an eCommerce business.

Sachin and Binny started Flipkart as an online book store from a two-bedroom apartment in Bengaluru’s Koramangala area. They initially started with funding of Rs 4,00,000 from their own pockets.

When Sachin and Binny received a positive response and success in selling books back in 2007, they planned to expand to electronics as well, and by 2014, the company had become one of India’s most valuable startups by reaching a valuation of $1 billion.

When the duo founded Flipkart, online shopping in India was even a distant dream for them, but the hard work and consistency paid off and made Sachin and Binny into widely successful entrepreneurs, which placed them quite ahead in the list of the successful Indian entrepreneurs .

Flipkart - Mission

Flipkart's mission is to provide a delightful customer experience by being the partner of choice for Indians and to create India's most customer-centric company.

Flipkart - Name, Tagline, and Logo

The founders of Flipkart, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, wanted a name that could speak beyond books .

Furthermore, they also wanted to name their company in such a way that it would be suitable for a wide range of product categories that could also be expanded in the future.

Flipkart means ‘ flipping things into a shopping cart ’.

The logo of Flipkart was changed twice. There have been several taglines that the company has gone through on different occasions. Some of the popular taglines are:

• Ab Har Wish Hogi Poori
• Abhi Nahi To Kabhi Nahi
• If it's trendy, it is on Flipkart
• Be Trendy, Always
• Itne mein, Itnaaaa Milega
• Shopping ka naya address
• Ab Mehengaayi Giregi

Flipkart - Parent Organization

In August 2018, U.S.-based retail chain Walmart acquired a 77% controlling stake in Flipkart for $16 billion, valuing the company at $20 billion.

With this acquisition, Walmart claimed that the omnichannel retail sector has a huge potential for future growth.

Speaking at Retail India Summit and Expo, Walmart India President and CEO Krish Iyer claimed that

"$16 billion deal to acquire Flipkart has attracted foreign and domestic investors in country's retail and omni-channel space. The recent investment in Flipkart shows Walmart is committed to the country. We do see a great value in terms of an omnichannel play in the whole process"

Owing to the demonetization, he said that it played a crucial role in the growth of the retail sector by structuring the economy along with the implementation of the GST.

These stakes were further increased to 81.3% towards the end of the same year. Soon after the acquisition, one of the founders of Flipkart, Sachin Bansal,,, left the company.

This year, Walmart invested $3.5 billion to boost its ownership of Flipkart to 80.5%. Notably, some of Flipkart's early investors, such as Tiger Global and Accel, divested their stakes by selling them to Walmart.

Walmart Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores.

Flipkart - Subsidiaries

The subsidiaries of Flipkart are Myntra, Mallers, eBay, Ekart, Jeeves, Mech Mocha, Upstream Commerce, Ugenie, DSYN Technologies, AdIQuity Technologies, Jabong, ClearTrip, Shopsy, Yaantra, Liv.Ai, F1 Info Solutions and Services, Fx Mart, Appiterate, ngpay, Mime360, WeRead, Chakpak, and Sasta Sundar.

In 2016, Flipkart Group acquired PhonePe . However, in December 2022, Walmart-owned Flipkart and PhonePe declared a full ownership separation, with Flipkart no longer holding any stake in the payments firm PhonePe.

Flipkart - Business Model and Revenue Model

Flipkart works on a B2C business model i.e., a business-to-consumer model. The company initially began with a direct-consumer model, wherein it sold books and some other products.

Today, it has become a marketplace with a huge catalog of products—right from FMCG to electronics and books.

Flipkart claims it has over 80 categories and over a million sellers on board from all across India.

It is an omni-channel service provider that leveraged the same model after the Walmart acquisition of Flipkart. The company earns almost all of its operating revenues from the sale of goods.

At Recode’s Code Commerce conference, Binny Bansal, who co-founded Flipkart along with Sachin Bansal, said:

“Sometime in the future, especially with some categories, omnichannel would make a ton of sense. It is definitely something which would be there in the future.

Flipkart - Partnerships

Flipkart has seen a wide range of partnerships throughout the years it has been active. Some of the most prominent of its partnerships are:

Adani Group

The Indian eCommerce marketplace announced a strategic and commercial partnership with the Adani Group on April 12, 2021, to enhance its supply chain and logistics infrastructure.

IIM Sambalpur

The eCommerce major partnered with the Indian Institute of Management, Sambalpur in August 2021, with the aim of supporting and promoting small businesses.

Flipkart partnered with Urbanic on September 8, 2021, to target young consumers across India.

Flipkart started collaborating with the leading Indian kids' fashion brand, Hopscotch on November 25, 2021, to strengthen its kids' fashion segment.

The popular audio streaming service, Pocket FM, has partnered with Flipkart on July 26, 2022, which will be a tie-up for its distribution via the famous e-commerce marketplace.

Flipkart - Funding and Investors

Flipkart has raised $14.3 billion in funding in 27 rounds.

Below are some of the funding details:

Flipkart's valuation exceeded $40 billion in 2022, and it was preparing for its upcoming public listing.

Flipkart - ESOPs

Flipkart Singapore has expanded its ESOP trust. According to the reports dated March 31, 2022, the company has allotted 21,370 equity shares, the total worth of which is reported to be around $4.4 million (Rs 30.71 crore) to the ESOP trust.

The Indian e-commerce giant already boasts of having the largest ESOP pool among startups of Indian origin.

A recent Longhouse Consulting report claims that Flipkart's ESOP pool is worth around $2.26 billion (Rs 17,000 crore). It is followed by OYO with a $1 billion pool, Zomato with $745 million, and Paytm with a $604 million ESOP pool.

Amidst a significant development, Flipkart has commenced an impressive ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) payout amounting to $700 million in July 2023, benefiting around 19,000 of its current and former employees. This move follows Flipkart's decision to separate full ownership of PhonePe, the Indian digital payments and financial services company. Defying the trend in the current challenging funding landscape for startups, Flipkart's generous payout demonstrates its commitment to recognizing and rewarding its workforce while also aiming to retain top talent in a fiercely competitive market.

Flipkart - Growth and Revenues

From its bootstrapped beginnings to the success Flipkart is witnessing today, it proudly talks about its success.

Though the company looked a bit shaky with the arrival of US-based Amazon in the Indian markets, the danger is no longer looming today with the assertion of Kalyan Krishnamurthy as the group CEO and the acquisition of Walmart of Flipkart.

Flipkart India is currently the leading eCommerce site in India.

The Walmart-owned Indian eCommerce company also clocked an impressive 64% market share when last recorded during the festive sales in October 2021.

2Gud RoadMap for Refurbished Products

Flipkart-owned 2Gud for the refurbished market will play a major role in driving budget shoppers to premium products. Although, with its great accreditation for shopping experience refurbished market will gain trust quickly among budget buyers and refurbished sellers.

Moreover, Flipkart will also keep a strict quality check on refurbished items so that the buyers use their products hassle-free.

However, its 10-day easy return policy will be super beneficial for the refurbished shopping market. Initially, 2Gud started the refurbished market with mobiles, laptops, tablets, smart watches, and accessories and plans to introduce 40+ categories in the giant refurbished market “2Gud”.

2GUD has expanded its category offerings to cater to style-conscious Indians who are looking for value in 2019. Targeted at Tier II and Tier III markets, 2GUD plans to evolve from a refurbished-only platform to a complete customer offering with categories such as affordable fashion, accessories, and home.

As part of a larger strategy to expand the benefits of e-commerce to the next 200 million customers, 2GUD, which is present across 40+ categories, will now expand to 150+ categories. 2GUD is focusing on making the latest trends across fashion, home, decor, kids, and other categories affordable for the Indian consumer.

2GUD predicts that the refurbished goods market, on gaining the trust of users, would go on to become a 20 billion dollar industry in the next half-decade. To be a leader in this segment of e-commerce in India is not an easy task, given the “trust issues” that continue to persist in this part of the pie.

Recently, 2GUD upgraded its m-site, making it available as a mobile app as it looks to cater to a larger set of audiences and shoppers. 2GUD has served close to a million customers from over 3,000 cities across India and has over 1,000 registered sellers.

Officially, eBay.in ended operations on August 14th, 2018. In the meantime, eBay is all set to relaunch its platform with cross-border trade offers exclusively. The Walmart-owned company has enormous growth prospects and has been doing great in its own way.

Flipkart - Big Billion Sale Success

The delivery of around 1 crore shipments within 5 days of the Big Billion Day sale has created a lasting mark on the eCommerce industry. Flipkart has seen a 10X growth from the last festive Big Billion sale. Out of the 1 crore, around 35 lakh deliveries were via Kirana Partners.

The number of crorepati sellers went up by 1.5 times, and the number of lakhpati sellers rose by 1.7 times.

In the Big Billion Days sale of 2021, over 3.75 lakh sellers joined hands to offer the best products online to their customers via Flipkart. This helped the customers save a whopping Rs 11500 crore during the “biggest Indian sale ever. The platform witnessed around 110 orders placed per second that varied across various products, including electronics, fashion, books, furnishing, etc., in its Big Billion sale of 2020.

Furthermore, the company is also seeing around 100x week-on-week growth on its social commerce model, which helps in assisted shopping and charges commission from advertisements and sellers working through its platform. This is why the company is striving to get a bigger share of the grocery ecosystem in the upcoming months.

Here are some growth highlights of the brand at a glance:

• Flipkart's valuation is $35 million as of January 31, 2024.
• Flipkart is a market leader.
• It is one of the pioneering ecommerce marketplaces in the country.
• Flipkart is known as the highest-valued among the unicorn companies in India .
• Flipkart presently boasts of having more than 375K sellers/resellers.
• The company is serving 160 million+ users in the country.

Flipkart Financials

Based on data received by business intelligence platform Tofler, Flipkart India recorded a 45% increase in net loss for 2022–2023 to Rs 4,890.6 crore in FY23 from Rs 3,371.2 crore in FY22. Consolidated sales for the Walmart-owned business in 2022–2023 were Rs 56,013 crore, a 9% increase over the prior fiscal year FY22.

The company's reported expenses for the fiscal year were Rs 60,858 crore in FY23, up 11.5% from Rs 54,580 crore in FY22. This covered expenses for things like buying trade shares, paying employee benefits, and financing-related fees.

The company started a unique feature of the value proposition by offering 24 x 7 support to the customer . Flipkart charges a certain amount or percentage of commission from the sellers, which varies depending on the type of product and the kind of sales. This may range from 5% to 20%, excluding taxes and discounts.

Flipkart - Product And Service

Flipkart some of the prominent products and services are mentioned below:

Flipkart Same Day Delivery Service

Over the past two months, Flipkart has shortened their delivery times in response to growing consumer demand for quick delivery in non-metropolitan areas and greater competition from quick commerce companies like Blinkit and Zepto.

Furthermore, Flipkart has started offering free same-day delivery of goods in 20 locations across a variety of categories, as per a news report from March 11, 2024.

Flipkart Labs

Flipkart Labs is one of the latest initiatives launched by Flipkart on April 28, 2022, with a view to foraying into the Web3 and Metaverse. Based in Bengaluru, Flipkart Labs aims to build an in-house innovation capability to fuel and shape the future of customer-centric e-commerce in India.

Flipkart Health+ App

Flipkart launched its new Health+ App, which will focus on empowering users with easy access to medicines, healthcare products, and services across India, on April 6, 2022.

Flipkart Launches Spoyl app-in-app fashion Vertical

Flipkart, the renowned e-commerce platform, has introduced an app-in-app fashion segment called SPOYL on August 17, 2023, with a specific focus on catering to the preferences of Gen Z consumers. This dedicated vertical within the Flipkart app will showcase an extensive selection of over 40,000 products spanning various categories, including western wear, accessories, and footwear.

Flipkart - Investments

Being a pioneering eCommerce business that is hailed as a fast-growing company, Flipkart has seen numerous investments. Flipkart has made 35 investments, of which 30 are lead investments. The most recent investment was made on April 4, 2023, when Flipkart Marketplace raised $358.2 million.

Here's a look at the most recent investments by Flipkart:

Flipkart - Mergers and Acquisitions

Flipkart has acquired 18 companies to date, as of March 2022. ANS Commerce was the latest company that Flipkart acquired in an undisclosed deal on April 19, 2022, in order to strengthen its eCommerce ecosystem.

From having @Flipkart as our seed investor along with Blume to now joining hands to build entertainment at scale for India - it's been a quite a full circle. Feeling immense gratitude towards all @MechMocha team members, investors, advisors and partners. https://t.co/77bhfReGKN — Arpita Kapoor (@Arpita_Kapoor) November 3, 2020

Here's a look at the 11 acquisitions by Flipkart:

Flipkart has exited from three companies:

• Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

Flipkart - Challenges

Challenges have always been face-to-face with India's most popular e-commerce player, but Flipkart has always come out victorious. One recent update has it that Flipkart and its archrival, Amazon, have been involved in alleged cases of competition law violations.

This is why CCI or the Competition Commission of India, raided a few seller offices of both Flipkart and Amazon to probe into the same after the Supreme Court gave its nod for it. The Walmart-owned company as well as that founded by Bezos were linked with multiple incidents of favoring their preferred sellers on their respective platforms.

Sushant Singh T-shirts Sales Controversy

Boycott Flipkart went trending on Twitter on July 26, 2022, after numerous Flipkart users allegedly accused Flipkart of "Cheap marketing", when they found tees containing the image of Sushant Singh Rajput with a message that read "Depression is like drowning".

According to these users, who were Sushant fans, these t-shirts with the message indicated that Sushant Singh died by suicide, while this has not been clearly identified. Some others also identified this thing as a "smear campaign" against the late actor.

Flipkart Subsidiary Cleartrip's Data Breach

Cleartrip, which is owned by Flipkart now, has experienced data breaches. The company confirmed on July 18, 2022, in an email sent to its customers that the information of some of the customers was compromised, but no sensitive information was leaked.

Flipkart-owned Cleartrip has already reached out to proper authorities and would resort to appropriate legal action systematically. The acquisition of Cleartrip was via a distress sale after the startup's growth plummeted to astonishing levels as the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. The company had earlier thrived another data breach in 2017 when a group called Turtle Squad defaced it for a few minutes.

Flipkart - Competitors

Flipkart India competes primarily with Amazon's Indian subsidiary and the domestic rival Snapdeal. In FY23, Flipkart showcased resilience among e-commerce leaders, securing a substantial 48% market share and effectively protecting its position.

Flipkart is significantly dominant in the sale of apparel (a position that was bolstered by its acquisitions of Myntra) and was described as being "neck and neck" with Amazon in the sale of electronics and mobile phones.

To list some of Flipkart's competitors, they would be:

Flipkart - Future Plans

Currently, both the founders, Sachin and Binny Bansal don’t serve Flipkart anymore but the brand continues to stand tall despite all the challenges. Flipkart has been one of the most prominent faces in the Indian startup ecosystem.

Flipkart has never been afraid of taking risks, and that is one of its key advantages. From books to electronics and household products and whatnot, it has evolved a lot in the past years and will continue to expand irrespective of the change in shareholders or competitors.

Walmart's major investment in Flipkart means better service and market presence for the latter. Advancements in eCommerce, a wider range of products, better products, and upgraded integrations with small businesses are just a small chunk of the innovations we can expect from Flipkart in the coming time.

Flipkart plans to launch its IPO at a substantial valuation of $60–70 billion, with intentions to list on U.S. stock exchanges as part of its ambitious future plans in 2023.

Is Flipkart the first online shopping company in India?

No, Flipkart is one of the first online shopping companies in India but not the first online shopping company in India. It was Fabmart.com, founded in 1999 by K Vaitheeswaran, which was India's first online shopping company.

Who is the owner of Flipkart?

Walmart, an American multinational retail corporation is the Parent Organisation of Flipkart. Flipkart was founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007.

Who are the founders of Flipkart?

Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal founded Flipkart in May 2007 in Bengaluru, India.

What is the Flipkart CEO's name?

The name of the Flipkart CEO is Kalyan Krishnamurthy.

What is the origin country of Flipkart?

Flipkart was founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal and is headquartered in Bengaluru, India.

When was Flipkart founded?

Flipkart was founded in October 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal.

Is Flipkart a product based company?

Though Flipkart was earlier solely a product-based company, it is now operating as a product and services-based company.

What is the tagline of Flipkart?

"Ab Har Wish Hogi Poori" is the tagline of Flipkart.

Where is the headquarters of Flipkart located?

The Flipkart headquarters is in Bangalore, India.

What are Flipkart products and services?

Flipkart was earlier solely an eCommerce operator that offered a wide array of products from home essentials to electronic gadgets to groceries and more. However, with the latest introduction of the cleaning and repairing services, Flipkart has already started its foray into the at-home services segment, to rival Urban Company.

Who are the Flipkart competitors in India?

Flipkart competitors in India include:

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18 Never Flip Our Cart—We Are ‘Flipkart’: A Case Study on E-commerce Giant Flipkart

• Published: August 2022
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Flipkart is not an Indian company since it is registered in Singapore and majority of its shareholders are foreigners. Because foreign companies are not allowed to do multi-brand e-retailing in India, Flipkart sells goods in India through a company called WS Retail. Other third-party sellers or companies can also sell goods through the Flipkart platform. Flipkart now employs more than 15,000 people. Flipkart allows payment methods such as cash on delivery, credit or debit card transactions, net banking, e-gift voucher, and card swipe on delivery. On 15 September 2007, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (not related) started Flipkart as an online bookstore. The two had known each other since 2005 when they attended the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT-Delhi) together and were colleagues at Amazon briefly. Eleven years later, the world’s largest retailer, Walmart, has agreed to buy a controlling stake in the company, Softbank chief executive officer Masayoshi Son said today (09 May). Flipkart’s journey has been nothing short of a roller-coaster ride. The company went from record-breaking investments and an acquisition spree to failed business experiments and devaluations—only to bounce back.

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, flipkart: journey of an indian e-commerce start-up.

Publication date: 26 November 2014

Teaching notes

Subject area.

Principles of management, Marketing, Finance, Strategy, Supply Chain Management, Entrepreneurship.

Study level/applicability

Master's Degree level courses, after students have been taught most of the basics related to management, marketing, finance, strategy, supply chain management and entrepreneurship.

Case overview

Founded in 2007 with an initial investment of less than USA $10,000, Flipkart has come a long way to become the largest E-commerce player in India with a registered user base of 9.6 million and valued at USA $1.6 billion. Efficient use of various marketing strategies has catapulted the company to its success. Till now, they have overcome most of the hurdles successfully. However, a lot needs to be discussed to find out ways to meet the challenges thrown by its competitors, to maintain its supremacy over other online e-retailers and continue its exponential growth to meet USA $1 billion sales by 2015.

Expected learning outcomes

After discussion of the case study, the student should be able to appreciate general business processes and develop basic analytical skills to resolve challenges faced by a fast-growing online start-up company in an emerging country like India. At the end, the students should be able to prepare a marketing plan for their own business within a stipulated budget.

Supplementary materials

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email [email protected] to request teaching notes.

• Entrepreneurship

Dutta, N. and Bhat, A.K. (2014), "Flipkart: journey of an Indian e-commerce start-up", , Vol. 4 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/EEMCS-03-2014-0064

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

You do not currently have access to these teaching notes. Teaching notes are available for teaching faculty at subscribing institutions. Teaching notes accompany case studies with suggested learning objectives, classroom methods and potential assignment questions. They support dynamic classroom discussion to help develop student's analytical skills.

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Flipkart (B): The Ongoing Battle for India's E-Commerce Market

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Story of Flipkart: How Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal Built India’s Leading Ecommerce Startup

Introduction

It is hard to imagine that one small company can completely transform the way we shop. But that is exactly what Flipkart has done. In 2007, ecommerce was still considered a niche business and most Indians did their shopping offline. Internet was taking over the world and Steve Jobs had just launched the world’s first iPhone in 2007 which was about to disrupt the entire smartphone industry in the years to come.

Two software engineers in India, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal did notice the changing dynamic of technology and realized the potential of ecommerce. Even though there were only 50 million internet users in India at the time, they knew that with smartphones coming into the picture, it was only a matter of time when more Indians will be connected to the internet. They wanted to take this opportunity to create an online shopping platform that would take India’s shopping experience to the next level.

Fast forward to today, India has more than 570 million internet users and the number of people shopping online has increased significantly. What started as a two-man mission to create India’s most trusted online shopping platform has transpired into Flipkart, which is India’s leading ecommerce platform offering a catalogue of more than 80 million products across 80 categories to more than 100 million customers.

In this article, we will examine the story of Flipkart and how Sachin and Binny were able to build India’s ecommerce industry from scratch.

How did they meet?

Before we start, you should know that if Sachin and Binny had been better students, there was a good chance that Flipkart would have never happened. Thankfully for us, they were not.

Back in 2005, Sachin and Binny were pursuing their B.Tech from IIT Delhi. While most students had gone home during the summer break, Sachin and Binny were stuck in college as they had failed to complete their projects on time. It was while working on their projects in the same lab that the two met for the first time. On a side note, it was probably the best summer for Binny, although he didn’t know it at the time, but not only did he meet his future business partner Sachin but also his life partner Trisha at the same lab.

However, Sachin and Binny only became friends after they had moved to Bangalore for their jobs along with a couple of other guys from their college. At the time, Sachin was working at a company called Techspan and Binny was working with Sarnoff. Sachin had started working with Amazon in 2006 and Binny followed him in Amazon later in 2007.

Origins of Flipkart

Soon the two got bored with their jobs at Amazon and started playing with ideas. Being fascinated with ecommerce, they decided to start a comparison-shopping website. Their plan was to create a website that would help users to compare prices of products across different websites and help them get the best value for their money.

As they started looking at different ecommerce websites, they soon realized that all the websites were really bad. They knew that they would never purchase from those poorly designed websites and they didn’t expect others to do that either.

While they had to shelf their idea for a comparison-shopping website, they started thinking if they could build a better ecommerce website and provide a better shopping experience to their customers. The duo was confident that being technology enthusiasts they could do it.

Without wasting any time, the two quit Amazon, pooled together 4 lakh rupees and started Flipkart in September of 2007. They had decided to sell books on their platform as it was easy to list, ship and find vendors as compared to other categories like electronics or fashion which would cost them a lot of money.

The journey begins

As they started looking for vendors to list books on their platform, they soon found out that it was not going to be as easy as they had thought. People still did not understand the internet and doing business on the internet was not something that was very popular, so most vendors were highly sceptical and didn’t trust their business model.

However, the duo remained persistent and managed to convince a few vendors to take a chance on them. With vendors convinced, they launched their website in October of 2007.

By the end of October, they had received their first order from a young techie named VVK Chandra who lived in Mahbubnagar in Telangana (previously the state of Andhra Pradesh). Their excitement from their first order soon made them anxious as their vendors told them that the book was unavailable. After feverishly searching for the book all across Bangalore, the duo managed to get hold of the book and successfully delivered their first order.

With that order, Flipkart was officially in business. At this time, there were barely any good ecommerce websites in India and the founders were set on putting their customers first and wanted to use technology to provide them with a better shopping experience.

Their efforts to deliver their first order showed their commitment towards their customers and it would serve them well in the future.  Being a two-man startup, they took care of everything from developing their website to delivering books. They had managed to deliver 20 shipments in 2007 itself.

Within six months the startup was operationally profitable and in 2008, they had moved into a 2BHK apartment in Kormangala, which would serve as their office for the coming years. Slowly, their business started to boom and by the end of the financial year of 2009, Flipkart had managed to sell books worth 40 million rupees.

Flipkart was a hit with book lovers and investors were starting to take notice. In 2009, Flipkart got its first venture capital investment of $1 million from Accel . By the end of 2009, the startup already had more than 150 employees and 3 offices across India.

In such a short span of time, Sachin and Binny had managed to grow their company at a tremendous pace and they had also developed their own personalities as entrepreneurs. Sachin was good at dreaming big and was the man behind ideas and vision of Flipkart, while Binny, a shy individual was known as the operations guys. They had found in each other a great partner who complemented each other’s skills. Whatever Sachin dreamed, Binny made it a reality.

India’s e-commerce was still a niche business and a large population was still hesitant to shop online. However, Flipkart had built a brand of trust among its loyal customers and continued to instil confidence by providing 24×7 customer support and their growth continued. But things were going to change drastically, once Tiger Global came on board as their new partner with its first investment of $10 million in 2010.

Now that Flipkart had already become a platform of choice for book lovers in India, the startup was ready to take its next step. With new partners and more investment, Flipkart was ready to dive into the electronics category. So they started selling mobiles in 2010.

But months went by and while book sales continued to grow, mobile sales remained stagnant. It was clear that customers were willing to pay small amounts of money like Rs 500 rupees online but they were not quite ready to pay large sums of money like Rs 10,000 or 15,000 for mobiles without first touching and feeling their products.

Flipkart still had a long way to go to build that amount of trust among its customers. This problem forced the founders to think differently. And they were able to come up with a brilliant idea of introducing Cash on Delivery. Flipkart was among one of the first ecommerce startups to introduce cash on delivery option for its customers.

The founders were hell-bent on building trust among Indian consumers and they doubled down on that dream by introducing no questions asked return policy and followed it up by a replacement policy. They were willing to sacrifice growth for customer satisfaction.

Today, these three features are offered by every ecommerce website in India but it was unheard of back in 2010 or 2011. Customers loved these options as they offered them flexibility in paying and buying products on their own terms. Thanks to Sachin and Binny, Indians who were afraid of shopping online were now warming up to this novel idea of online shopping and getting the products delivered right at their doorsteps.

Now just like offline shopping, they had the option of either just returning the product if they didn’t like it or get a complete refund. This was a game-changer and Flipkart’s sales started to grow even more rapidly then they had ever grown. From merely, 40 million rupees in revenues in the financial year of 2009, Flipkart expanded its revenues to 750 million rupees by the end of the financial year of 2011. Almost a 20X growth.

Soon there was no stopping Flipkart, they had cracked the code to Indian consumers. They continued expanding across categories and money came pouring in from investors. By 2012, Flipkart had already become a unicorn. It was probably the second unicorn in India after InMobi.

In fact, the term unicorn only became popular after it was coined in 2013 by Aileen Lee, who is the founder of Cowboy Ventures.  Flipkart became a company that other startups would look up to in the coming years, while Sachin and Binny became the face of India’s growing startup ecosystem.

Competing with Amazon

Flipkart was the undisputed leader of ecommerce space in India. The company was a big reason for enabling millions of customers to shop online. However, things were about to change as Amazon entered India in 2013. Apart from Amazon, Flipkart was also going to face some competition from another Indian ecommerce startup Snapdeal . While Snapdeal was still small compared to Flipkart, Amazon was going to be a force to reckon with.

This did not deter Sachin and Binny, as they knew their customers intimately and had built a brand of trust which was supported by their technology platform that had been built over years of customer feedback. Their confidence was shared by their investors who helped Flipkart raise nearly $2 billion in 2014 alone. One of their oldest investors Tiger Global and Accel continued to put their faith in the company.

Armed with a $2 billion war chest, Flipkart acquired Myntra in 2014 to expand into fashion ecommerce. Later in 2016, Flipkart acquired another fashion ecommerce startup Jabong to scale rapidly in online fashion commerce. This proved to be a smart move by the founders as they realized they were better off acquiring two of the leading fashion ecommerce platforms rather than building one on their own, which would have cost them time and money.

With Amazon competing for the market in India, Flipkart didn’t have the luxury of time that it had during the early days. Thanks to that acquisition, Flipkart is now a leader in fashion ecommerce space with more than 60% of market share.

Flipkart’s ability to understand the Indian market and the experience of their founders and team in creating a company from the ground had given them the advantage over Amazon which helped them to stay competitive and ahead of Amazon.

As of 2018, Flipkart remains India’s leading online retailer with a market share of 31.9% , compared to 31.2% of Amazon. After adding the sales of Myntra and Jabong, Flipkart’s total market share increases to 38.3%.

Flipkart Failures

With all of Flipkart’s success, the founders had to face a lot of challenges and suffer more than a few failures as well. It was their ability to experiment quickly and scale what worked rapidly, which helped them build Flipkart into an ecommerce giant it is today.

In 2011, Flipkart had acquired a digital content platform Mime360 and tried to expand into online music streaming with the launch of its music streaming service Flyte in 2012. Piracy was a major issue at the time and there was no dearth of new torrent websites offering free music popping up every day. With numerous online platforms available for downloading free music, Flipkart’s latest experiment was bound to fail. Flipkart had to shut down Flyte in 2013.

Before the company found success in digital payments through PhonePe , it tried to launch its own payment gateway called PayZippy in 2013. Unable to onboard merchants, its payment gateway was shut down in 2014.

Then there was Flipkart’s app-only experiment where the company blocked access to its website for mobile users and directed them to download its app. While the majority of their traffic came from mobile users, this move was still unsuccessful and Flipkart had to reinstate its website, giving users back the option of accessing both mobile website and app.

Walmart-Flipkart Acquisition

Despite all the setbacks, Flipkart founders continued to focus on what their customers wanted and that helped them to make Flipkart into one of India’s most successful startups. However, in 2018, Sachin and Binny’s decade long journey at Flipkart ended after Walmart acquired Flipkart for $16 billion and valuing the company at over $20 billion.

Sachin had served as Flipkart’s CEO until 2016 when Binny took over the reins and remained the CEO until their exit from Flipkart in 2018. While their exit was seen as controversial by many media outlets and people in the Indian Startup Ecosystem, the two have moved on to start their own ventures.

Sachin went on to start Navi Technologies to focus on India’s growing fintech space, while Binny is using his experience at Flipkart to help startup founders scale and grow their business through his latest venture called xto10x Technologies .

Now that Flipkart doesn’t need to look for outside investment, there is no doubt that the company will continue to grow tremendously and help Walmart establish a stronghold in India.

Even though the founders might have left Flipkart, let us not forget that Flipkart wouldn’t have reached where it is today without the long term vision of Sachin Bansal and operational skills of Binny Bansal who worked at making Sachin’s lofty dreams a reality.

So what is it that these founders did right that most entrepreneurs do wrong? Firstly, it is clear that Sachin and Binny always put the needs of their customers first. They knew from the get-go that Indian customers lacked trust in ecommerce websites. They built the trust of their customers by understanding their needs and giving them exactly what they wanted. They already had an engineering background, which helped them built a website that was better than their few competitors and which only improved as more feedback they got from their customers. Things were kept simple for the customers by introducing options like cash on delivery, replacement and refund policies.

Apart from focusing on their customers, they had kept Flipkart profitable before they went to look for outside investment. During the first two years, they had grown Flipkart out of the revenues they generated from their sales. They proved to their investors that this was a sustainable business, which made it easy for them to get investment. This approach is different from most entrepreneurs, who go looking for investment before they have even tested their business model. However, the story of Flipkart is different today, as the company is losing billions of rupees as it competes with Amazon by offering heavy discounts and cashbacks.

Flipkart had its own set of failures but that did not deter the founders to take a step back but they kept on experimenting until they found the winning formula. It was their persistence and bouncing back from failures that helped them discover new and innovative methods to keep building and growing Flipkart.

Today, Flipkart is a huge company with massive revenues and thousands of employees. However, Sachin and Binny are still two passionate engineers who are just looking for new problems to solve, even if their journeys have taken them on different roads after a decade of building Flipkart.

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How Flipkart pioneered a new digital approach to position itself as “India Ka Fashion Capital”

To quickly resonate among shoppers as one of India’s premier online fashion destinations, Flipkart went beyond its usual even-paced strategy to reach a wide audience. The brand took a YouTube-led approach to make an immediate impact online, resulting in 100M users reached in the first 10 days of the campaign and a near 10% lift in consideration by the end.

Last year, if you’d asked most Indian consumers about Flipkart , they’d likely have told you about its broad array of consumer electronics at competitive prices. Behind the scenes, however, fashion was actually one of Flipkart’s best-performing categories. In 2018, the brand set its sights on matching up reality with perception by aligning Flipkart Fashion as India’s online fashion capital. This was no easy task given the highly competitive market, but the brand recognized an opportunity ripe for the taking.

To establish its identity as “India Ka Fashion Capital,” Flipkart knew it needed to grab the attention of new fashion shoppers before their go-to stores were set in stone.

How ripe? By 2020, online sales for products including apparel and accessories in India is estimated to reach $40-45 billion . Improved infrastructure across India's non-metro cities has opened Flipkart’s doors to a wider audience of online shoppers. But the brand was still challenged by a fundamental shopping behavior: frequent shoppers typically buy from their favorite retailers. To establish its identity as “India Ka Fashion Capital,” Flipkart knew it needed to grab the attention of new fashion shoppers before their go-to stores were set in stone.

Flipkart is known to take experimental approaches to its campaigns , and this time was no different. Rather than steadily building up its reach over time, the brand quickly cast a wide net online from day one of the campaign, focusing on Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities where consumer growth was strong and steady. Along with immediately boosting awareness, this strategy gave Flipkart early insights from digital that helped personalize its approach in the following weeks. With Flipkart Fashion fresh on consumers’ minds, the rest of the campaign eventually drove impressive lifts in consideration and interest.

Using digital to reach and nurture a wider audience

Flipkart kicked off its “India Ka Fashion Capital” campaign with a bang: the brand complemented its TV spot with a variety of YouTube ads to maximize its reach while running search and dynamic display ads in support. This ensured that Flipkart Fashion would be visible to consumers across multiple touchpoints, and using audience insights  garnered in the first two weeks helped the brand hone its messaging to be more relevant at each stage of the journey.

Flipkart’s video creative played off its previous “kidults” (kids as adults) campaign with a twist: the first ads teased the addition of two leading Bollywood celebrities,  Shraddha Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor .

On YouTube, Flipkart was able to use affinity audiences  to reach shoppers interested in fashion apparel and then follow up with bumper ads (featuring both Shraddha and Ranbir ) on fashion-related content. After the 10-day blast period, the brand tailored its search and dynamic display ads throughout the rest of the campaign to reconnect with consumers who showed interest in Flipkart Fashion.

Striving for early impact to make a lasting impression

Flipkart’s front-loaded media strategy helped the brand reach more than 100 million users on YouTube alone in the first 10 days, whereas the brand’s previous Flipkart Fashion campaign took a month to do the same.

Comparing cumulative reach over time

Digital blast strategy

Traditional strategy

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But the best result wasn’t just reaching millions of shoppers. By making an early connection, the brand was in a better position to develop meaningful, long-term relationships with its audience. And once the full campaign had finished, it had clearly resonated beyond initial awareness: Brand Lift studies showed results that exceeded Flipkart’s past campaigns across the board.

Flipkart revealed that brands that go heavy on digital to make an early impression on a wide audience can drive even more impact with their campaigns down the line. Best of all, it showed how better results can arise from achieving the same online reach in a shorter period of time. “When we experiment and break barriers with our marketing, we’ve always seen great results,” said Kunal Dubey, Flipkart’s director of marketing. “This year’s Flipkart Fashion campaign was no different. Frontloading our digital spend and using our audience signals to optimize over time turned out to be more effective than we could’ve ever imagined.”

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Flipkart Case Study: Marketing and Advertising Campaigns

Flipkart is an e-commerce Indian-based online marketplace, founded in 2007 by two friends Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal . The fact is that Binny Bansal is a former employee of Amazon. Sachin had referred Binny to Amazon, which till then had been working in the company for more than a year.

When Flipkart was launched, it was initially aimed at selling books before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, home essentials and groceries, and lifestyle products.

According to Redseer, in October 2023, Flipkart had a 64% market share of India’s e-commerce industry.

Flipkart, currently with a strength of 33,000 employees, has 295 million registered users and over 12 million daily visits. Flipkart’s technology has enabled it to deliver 8.5 million shipments per month – and that number is increasing year on year.

According to Crunchbase, The total funding amount to be received by Flipkart by 2023 is US$ 12.9 billion.

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Flipkart: Warehousing & Shipments

Logistics is one of the most important aspects of any successful e-commerce platform. Flipkart ships more than 100000 items in a day which makes managing the logistics an overwhelming task for the company.

Also, the cost of delivery is paid by the company itself, making logistics a financially complicated issue. Hence in order to successfully manage the logistics. Flipkart uses its in-house logistics known as eKart‟ (EKL).

The e-commerce company created E-Cart as a personal brand in April 2009 to serve the B2C side of WS-Retail, Flipkart and currently reaches consumers in around 150 cities.

eKart currently provides services like Delivery Logistics, Reverse Logistics and cash on Delivery. It also provides customer support and technology integration for order tracking, customer notifications, and reporting.

Digital Marketing Strategies

Let’s look at how Flipkart used digital marketing to promote its products and services.

Flipkart mostly targets Indians who use the internet and don’t have time to visit offline shopping stores. Although its target audience is scattered across different market segments as consumers of all demographic backgrounds can find products of interest to them, 85% of its audience is between the age group of 16 to 55 years.

Search Engine Optimization 

If we talk about organic traffic, Flipkart has achieved tremendous results through search engine optimization. 

Flipkart is India’s largest online retailer and has worked hard to optimise its website for search engines. Flipkart appears in the top 5 results for every product search, and this is possible because Flipkart has invested heavily in SEO.

Social Media Marketing

Flipkart continues to win over the audience on social media, duly manned by celebrity influencers apart from its roster of brand ambassadors from time to time. They often run campaigns for specific sales, opportunities, and brands.

• Flipkart gets 79.08% of website visits from Youtube.
• From Facebook 7.71%.
• 3.99% of People prefer to share Flipkart products on WhatsApp with friends and relatives. which is a sign of brand management and trust in Flipkart.

Video Advertisement on YouTube

As the data mentioned above shows that Flipkart gets the most traffic from YouTube. So now have to look at and understand the Flipkart video advertising strategy.

Celebrities Marketing Campaign

Flipkart is known for its collaborations. It also makes particular investments in star power and celebrity marketing. Flipkart keeps on collaborating with various famous personalities year after year.

One of the memorable and recent collaborations was with Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt on “#IndiaKaFashionCapital”.

Television Ads

Flipkart and its subsidiaries – Myntra and PhonePe – have seen a significant increase in their television commercials since August, when they were acquired by US retail giant Walmart. The last time Flipkart launched a branding campaign with the tagline ‘Ab Har Vish Hogi Puri’ was when it spent massive marketing dollars to create brand awareness.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is commission-based marketing by which a person can earn rewards in the form of commission for marketing the products of another person or company.

Flipkart undertakes the responsibility of marketing its products to third parties known as affiliates and shares a portion of the profit on the sale of the products.

Affiliate programs of e-commerce portals like Flipkart and Amazon are some of the legitimate ways to earn money online in 2022. The Flipkart portal provides almost everything needed for a common man.

From beauty to baby care products to fashion to electronics and from beauty to baby care products, everything can be found on this online portal. All you need is good traffic to your website or blog.

Flipkart vs Amazon

The presence of two of the biggest brands in the Indian market has made the industry highly competitive. Since both have entered the private-label business to increase sales. Both introduced unique features and value-added services and expanded into specific areas to compete with their businesses.

Although Amazon is a world-recognized brand but in India, Flipkart is always 1 step ahead of Amazon.

SWOT Analysis: Flipkart

• The supply chain
• Strong brand value and brand awareness
• Advertising and promotion
• Strategy acquisition
• late delivery
• IT Infrastructure

Business Model of Flipkart

Flipkart, which has redefined shopping in India, operates on a B2C (business-to-consumer model). Flipkart started with a direct-to-consumer model selling books and some other products, before turning to a marketplace model that connects sellers and buyers and expands its catalogue.

Today, it sells everything from smartphones to clothes to furniture to refrigerators to FMCG accessories – and yes, books too.

Flipkart claims to have millions of sellers from across India who list their products in over 80 categories. The average consumer may not care about who the seller is and the relationship he has with Flipkart. Whereas the seller who hasn’t exactly reached out to the customer can now do so thanks to Flipkart’s platform. To facilitate this transaction and fulfil the order, Flipkart charges different percentages as the commission fees from the seller.

List of Flipkart Subsidiaries

Here is the list of 10 Flipkart subsidiaries with a short description and the date of acquiring these companies.  

• Myntra – It’s another ecommerce online store acquired by Flipkart in May 2014. 
• PhonePe – is an Indian digital payment and financial technology company that Flipkart acquired in April 2016.
• Cleartrip – This is a travel booking search engine globally famous for its incredible service. Flipkart acquired 100 per cent of Cleartrip’s shareholding in April 2021.
• Flipkart Health – This is an online pharmacy, also known as SastaSundar. Flipkart acquired SastaSundar in December 2021.
• Ekart – is a logistics company that delivers 10 million orders per month. Flipkart acquired eKart in 2015.
• Shopsy – Like Flipkart, shopsy is another ecommerce platform that Flipkart acquired in July 2021. 
• Flipkart Wholesale – This platform mainly focuses on B2B, in other words, WS retail. We have yet to learn the old name of this company, but Flipkart acquired it in 2012. 
• Jeeves-F1 – Jeeves & F1, both part of the Flipkart Group of companies, are among India’s most prominent third-party neutral service providers offering comprehensive lifecycle management for various categories, including Mobility Consumer Electronics, Home Appliances, Furniture, IT & IT Peripherals, AV & Enterprise Solutions. 
• Yaantra – is a single window stopover that caters to all smartphone queries, such as broken glass, water damage, software problem, power issue etc. with the best in the industry services. Flipkart Group acquired electronics ecommerce firm Yaantra in January 2022. 
• ANS Commerce – is India’s #1 full-stack e-commerce enabler helping brands sell online. Flipkart acquired ANS Commerce in June 2022 to strengthen its e-commerce system via technological innovation. 

In Conclusion

However, the situation is not as dire as it may seem. Flipkart’s magical Bansal touch may have disappeared, but its collective expertise and experience to deal with the Indian audience live on. The quick solution to tackle COVID-19 and offering essential items to the cities by Flipkart is commendable. However, e-retailers should seek to gain their market share by winning the trust of their customers rather than money.

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Flipkart Success Story and Case Study

In this article, we will take a detailed look at the case study and success story of e-commerce giant Flipkart , which has inspired thousands of budding entrepreneurs to go after their dreams even if the path is full of problems, obstacles and initial disappointments.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents :

How was flipkart founded.

• Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny are not brothers

Flipkart Strategic Expansion

• Cashing on the COD payment option
• The challenges faced by Flipkart
• Changes in leadership

Flipkart Acquisitions

• Flipkart Reward Program

Flipkart Failures

The founders of Flipkart – Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal – are former IIT Delhi graduates. They left their lucrative jobs at Amazon to achi eve their entrepreneurial dreams. As a result, Flipkart was launched in October of 2007, with the aim of selling books online.

The plan was simple – c ustomers would place an order for books through Flipkart and get them delivered right at their doorstep. They started their journey from a 2-bedroom apartment and made just 20 shipments in its debut year. Reportedly, the company was set up with just 4 lakh rupees and now its valuation has been estimated to be roughly $24.9 billion .

No, F lipkart f ounders Sachin and Binny are not brothers

Although the two founders share the same last name, they are not related. Also, both of them have done their graduation from the same college but they were a batch apart and weren’t classmat es. Their first meeting happened at the common Amazon office , which was running a technology development centre in the southern city since 2004 .

Sachin was the one who came up with big ideas and a long-term vision while Binny took care of the implementation part. Together, they were bound for glory which they eventually received before parting ways in 2018 .

Flipkart opened up its first office in Bengaluru in the year 2008. This was followed by new offic es in Delhi and Mumbai in 2009 . The same year the ambitious startup got its first capital investment of $1 million from Accel Partners , a well-known investment firm. By the end of 2009 , the company had nearly 150 employees .

Here’ s a timeline of the flow of funds that helped Flipkart grow:

2012: Flipkart announced a $150 million funding round led by South Africa-based tech majors named Naspers . By this time Flipkart had a valuation of $1 billion, thus becoming a part of the Unicorn startup club!

2013 : The company again raised a sum of $ 20 0 million from its existing investors. Another $160 million was raised from Sofina, Morgan Stanley, Dragoneer and Vulcan capital. In this period, Flipkart had an estimated valuation of nearly $1.6 billion.

2014 : Flipkart acquired Myntra for nearly $280 million. It then raised $210 million from DST Global. The valuation was recorded at $2.6 billion.

2014 : The same year Flipkart witnessed a $1 billion funding round from GIC Singapore. As a result, the company valuation shot up to $7 billion within 3 months.

2014 : In another round, the company raised as many as $700 million from hedge funds such as Steadview Capital, Greenoaks , sovereign wealth fund Qatar I nvestment Authority, T Rowe Price. The valuation at this point stood at an enormous $11 billion.

2015: Flipkart reached a landmark valuation at $15.5 billion. It again raised roughly $700 million from its investors.

2016: Flipkart would like to forget this year as the company witnessed the first big markdown by a Mutual Fund (Morgan Stanley). The valuation came down to $11 billion.

2016: Flipkart kept receiving continuous markdowns by a number of mutual fund investors such as T Rowe Price, Vanguard and Fidelity.

2016: A Morgan Stanley Mutual Fund made a significant cut to the value of its Flipkart shares. As a result, the valuation wit nessed a further drop to $5.6 billion.

2018: Walmart acquired 77% stake in Flipkart for $16 billion .

Cashin g on the Cash On Delivery Payment (COD) option

Flipkart was among the first major e-commerce players in India to introduce the cash on delivery option for its customers in 2010. There are many reasons as to why cash on delivery plays an important role in the e-commerce sector. For instance:

Helps develop a sense of trust

When Flipkart started operating in the country, it knew that people will be doubtful about any kind of scam or loss if they stuck to prepaid orders. So they introduced cash on delivery (COD) payment option so that people can place orders with trust, without any fear of losing money.

No dependency on payment cards This point is especially valid for deliveries in rural or sub-urban areas, where people still rely heavily on cash for any kind of transaction.

Allows some time to gather money for payment Sometimes e-commerce companies like Flipkart launch exciting offers which are very hard to ignore for people fond of online shopping. Choosing cash on delivery gives them some time to gather cash so that they do not miss out on the limited-time offer.

The Challenges faced by Flipkart

The term e-commerce was almost unknown when Flipkart launched its ambitious startup. Many market experts dismissed online shopping as a western concept, stating that Indian customers wanted to ‘ touch and feel’ whatever they buy . Here are a number of challenges that the company came across in its long journey:

Supply Chain and Logistics

In order to procure products from thousands of sellers, maintain inventory and ensure timely delivery, an effective supply chain and logistics network was the first challenge that Flipkart had to endure.

Reverse logistics is still a major issue for the company as more than 15% of shipments are returned by customers for a number of reasons. These bring huge losses to the company.

Managing Inventory

Flipkart has major warehouses across many cities, especially metropolitan areas , such as Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Noida, and many other cities. Furthermore, they have small regional distribution centres in over 600 locations. With Flipkart’s “F-Assured” program, you can expect to get quality products delivered as the company practices strict quality checks before shipping any item from its warehouse.

Cash On Delivery Issues

COD does have many benefits for customers, but it indeed puts burden on e-commerce firms such as Flipkart. Many customers return the product without paying; and the company ends up losing all the money spent on procuring, storing and shipping the product. That is why prepaid payment options are always favourite among sellers listed on Flipkart.

Managing vendors and Logistics Provider

Managing lakhs of sellers on a platform is a herculean task in itself. Added to that is the issue of managing all logistics service providers (LSPs), if the company is dependent on 3 rd party services. Flipkart, however, has its in-house logistics company, named E k art, which ensures smooth and on-time deliveries.

Funding Issues

For any startup to prosper, a continuous flow of funds is a must. These funds not only aid improving existing services and facilities but also help the companies to bring ne w, innovative ideas to reality. Fortunately for Flipkart, there hasn’t been any shortage of funds, as seen in the timeline mentioned above.

Tough Competition from rival Amazon India

When Amazon entered the online shopping market in India in 2013, many exp erts feared that it may attract Flipkart’s loyal customers with great service, offers, international brand value , video streaming services and no shortage of funds. However, despite Amazon being a threat, Flipkart is still the largest online retailer in India as of 2019 with a market share of 31.9%, while Amazon India is following closely with a share of 31.2%.

The festive season in India often becomes a hot battleground for these two giants as they offer great deals to customers in the form of Flipkart Big Billion Days and Amazon Great Indian Festival.

Changes in Leadership

Co-Founder Sachin Bansal quit as the CEO of Flipkart in 2016, presumably due to performance-oriented issues. He was succeeded by Binny Bansal as the former took over the position of Executive Chairman.

In the year 2017, Kalyan Krishnamurthy took charge as the new CEO of Flipkart. He was previously an executive in Flipkart investor, Tiger Global. Upon Krishnamurthy’s appointment, Binny Bansal became CEO of the entire group which includes portals such as Myntra-Jabong, PhonePe and logistics company Ekart.

Flipkart bought online apparel portal Myntra for roughly $300 million in the year 2014. Two years later, they acquired online fashion retailer Jabong in a deal worth $70 million.

The same year Flipkart acquired digital payments startup PhonePe. It also acquired Ebay India in exchange for an equity stake . Ebay also agreed to make a $500 million investment in its business before handing it over to Flipkart in 2017.

The Flipkart reward program – Flipkart Plus

Whenever you shop on Flipkart, the company rewards you with 2 Super Coins for every 100 rupees spent. As soon as you collect 200 Super Coins, you can use them to become a plus member – and the best part is that the coins will not be deducted. You can use these coins to get heavy discounts on Flipkart products and other products and services offered by partner companies. With Flipkart Plus membership, the company offers you the following benefits:

• Free and Fast Delivery
• Early access to big billion day sales
• Redeem coins for rewards
• Superior customer support

Failures are meant for growth. If a company does not embrace its failures as much as its successes, they are bound for long-term loss. Flipkart too has had its fair share of failures, which have been listed below:

Flipkart tried to get into the online music streaming business in 2011. For this purpose, they acquired a digital content platform named Mime360. Flyte was launched in the year 20 12; however, with tough competition from existing portals offering free services and the problem posed by piracy, Flyte had to shut down in 2013.

Before Flipkart acquired PhonePe, it tried experimenting with a payment gat eway named PayZippy in 2013. The project failed miserably as the payment gateway was unable to bring merchants on-board. It was shut in 2014.

Going A pp-only for mobile users

In order to push mobile users to download their apps, Flipkart blocked them from accessing their website and prompted them to download the app. The move was apparently backfiring and therefore Flipkart had to reinstate the mobile website.

If you look closely at the journey of India’s home-grown e-commerce giant Flipkart , you will see that the company never lost faith in its investors and customers. Despite tough competition from arch rivals Amazon, the company has been going strong despite many major changes in leadership in the past few years.

E-commerce has become a huge part of our daily lives. Owing to the number of job opportunities and huge business scope that the sector provides, every individual should take up a course in e-commerce marketing .

Thanks for reading 🙂

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Explained: The allegations and antitrust probe against Flipkart

Why has the nclat asked the cci to investigate the business practices of flipkart what are the 'abuse of dominant position' allegations against the online marketplace giant.

Walmart-owned Flipkart has moved the Supreme Court against an order passed by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on March 4, which had asked the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to initiate a probe against the company for “abuse of dominant position” .

What was the case against Flipkart?

In 2018, a group of more than 200 retailers, which used to sell their products on sites such as Flipkart , Amazon, Snapdeal, and others, approached the CCI with a complaint that Flipkart was adopting predatory pricing mechanisms, which resulted in losses for small retailers.

The CCI’s mandate is to “eliminate practices having adverse effect on competition, promote and sustain competition, protect the interests of consumers and ensure freedom of trade in the markets of India”.

In their complaint, these retailers, under the umbrella of All India Online Vendors’ Association, told CCI that Flipkart bought products from small retailers and sold them at a discounted price to WS Retail Services Private Limited – and subsequently, WS Retail re-sold the same products on Flipkart’s site.

The vendors association also alleged that Flipkart and WS Retail were using a veiled corporate structure, which had a direct conflict with other manufacturers selling on their platform. WS Retail too, had been founded by Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal.

The vendors association also asked CCI not to clear any pending “combinations” until final orders were passed in the case. In 2018, Flipkart was in talks with Walmart for sale of majority stake in its business. The deal went through in August 2018, and Walmart bought 77 per cent stake in Flipkart for $16 billion.

What was CCI’s decision?

The CCI held in a detailed order that according to the market structure in 2018, it could not be said that any one player was “commanding any dominant position”, since a low entry barrier had allowed many e-commerce players to enter the market.

However, the CCI also noted that new players would find it difficult to breach the marketplace presence gained by incumbents, despite the low threshold for entry.

In its observations, CCI said that e-commerce was still in a relatively nascent stage in the country, and commissions to retailers formed an important part of that marketplace model.

“Recognizing the growth potential as well as the efficiencies and consumer benefits that such markets can provide, the Commission is of the considered opinion that any intervention in such markets needs to be carefully crafted lest it stifles innovation,” the CCI said.

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Why did the NCLAT set aside CCI’s order?

In its order asking the CCI to constitute a Director General-level probe against Flipkart for abuse of dominant position, the NCLAT relied up on a judgment by the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT).

The ITAT had in that judgment noted the observations of an income tax assessing officer who had probed a senior vice president of the company. The senior vice president had, according to ITAT’s judgment, accepted that the “strategy of selling at a price lower than the cost price (predatory pricing) is to capture market share and to earn profits in the long run”.

Though the ITAT had ruled in favour of Flipkart and set aside a tax demand against it, it had in its judgment also observed that the manner in which Flipkart was operating in the market could be said to be an abuse of dominant position, and that the e-commerce company had resorted to “predatory pricing”, the NCLAT said.

Since the All India Online Vendors’ Association had “prima facie” made out a case against Flipkart for abuse of its position, the same should indeed be probed, the appellate tribunal ruled.

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What now for Flipkart?

Flipkart has approached the Supreme Court against the probe into its alleged abuse of dominant position in the Indian e-commerce market.

Though the company had told the CCI that WS Retail had stopped selling on Flipkart as of 2017, the anti-trust body will still have to probe the nature of predatory pricing that has been alleged against the company.

The CCI will also have to probe the allegations of the corporate veil around Flipkart and its associates, and whether they had any conflict of interest with other retailers and manufacturers on the platform.

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eBay and Flipkart Complete Exclusive Agreement to Jointly Address the eCommerce Market Opportunity in India

Press Release

Accelerating and maximizing the opportunity in India in partnership with Flipkart.

UPDATE : eBay and Flipkart have completed their transaction announced on April 10, 2017.  In exchange for an equity stake in Flipkart, eBay has made a $500 million cash investment in and sold its eBay.in business to Flipkart.  Effective immediately, Flipkart will own and operate eBay.in.  Additionally, the companies are moving forward to jointly pursue cross-border trade opportunities to make eBay’s global inventory accessible to more India consumers, while eBay’s millions of active buyers globally will have access to more unique Indian inventory provided by Flipkart.

The below release was originally published on April 10, 2017:

San Jose, CA and Bangalore, India – eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), a global commerce leader, and Flipkart, a leading eCommerce company in India, have agreed to jointly pursue eCommerce opportunities in the Indian market.  In exchange for an equity stake in Flipkart, eBay will make a $500 million cash investment in and sell its eBay.in business to Flipkart.  Flipkart will own and operate the eBay.in business upon the close of the transaction.  eBay and Flipkart have also entered into an exclusive agreement in which they will jointly pursue cross-border trade opportunities to make eBay’s global inventory accessible to more India consumers, while eBay’s millions of active buyers globally will have access to more unique Indian inventory provided by Flipkart.

“The combination of eBay’s position as a leading global eCommerce company and Flipkart’s market stature will allow us to accelerate and maximize the opportunity for both companies in India,” said Devin Wenig, President and CEO of eBay Inc.  “eBay is committed to winning in India in partnership with Flipkart.  Our exclusive global trade partnership will allow eBay and Flipkart to reach even more consumers around the world."

“This partnership between Flipkart and eBay is the coming together of two pioneering innovators who have disrupted commerce by applying technology. It bodes well for Indian and global customers, sellers and the wider eCommerce ecosystem. eBay.in has built a strong presence in India over the years and we hope to take it to greater heights as part of the Flipkart group,” said Binny Bansal, Group CEO, Flipkart. 

Upon the close of the transaction, which is expected later this year, Flipkart will acquire eBay’s buyers in India.  eBay will remove the number of active buyers in India from its reporting during the quarter in which the transaction closes.  eBay does not expect this transaction to have a material impact on its guidance provided on January 25, 2017. 

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements relating to, among other things, the future performance of eBay Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries.  These statements are based on eBay’s current expectations, forecasts and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainties.   Actual results could differ materially from those predicted or implied in this press release for a variety of reasons. You can find more information about risks, uncertainties and other factors that could affect our operating results in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by visiting eBay’s Investor Relations website at  https://investors.ebayinc.com  or the SEC's website at  www.sec.gov .  You should not rely on any forward-looking statements. All information in this press release is as of April 10, 2017, and we do not intend and undertake no duty to update this information.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) is a global commerce leader including the Marketplace, StubHub and Classifieds platforms. Collectively, we connect millions of buyers and sellers around the world, empowering people and creating opportunity through Connected Commerce. Founded in 1995 in San Jose, Calif., eBay is one of the world's largest and most vibrant marketplaces for discovering great value and unique selection. In 2016, eBay enabled $84 billion of gross merchandise volume. For more information about the company and its global portfolio of online brands, visit www.ebayinc.com .

About Flipkart Group

The Flipkart Group is India’s largest e-commerce marketplace and includes group companies Flipkart, Myntra, Jabong and PhonePe. Launched in October 2007, Flipkart offers over 80 million products across 80+ categories and is known for pioneering services such as Cash on Delivery, No Cost EMI and easy returns – innovations that made online shopping more accessible and affordable for millions of customers. Together with Myntra and Jabong, which hold dominant positions in the online fashion market, and PhonePe, India’s first UPI based payment app with offerings in nine languages, the Flipkart Group has led the transformation of commerce in India.

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O.J. Simpson, Football Star Whose Trial Riveted the Nation, Dies at 76

He ran to football fame and made fortunes in movies. His trial for the murder of his former wife and her friend became an inflection point on race in America.

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By Robert D. McFadden

O.J. Simpson, who ran to fame on the football field, made fortunes as an all-American in movies, television and advertising, and was acquitted of killing his former wife and her friend in a 1995 trial in Los Angeles that mesmerized the nation, died on Wednesday at his home in Las Vegas. He was 76.

The cause was cancer, his family announced on social media.

The jury in the murder trial cleared him, but the case, which had held up a cracked mirror to Black and white America, changed the trajectory of his life. In 1997, a civil suit by the victims’ families found him liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman, and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages. He paid little of the debt, moved to Florida and struggled to remake his life, raise his children and stay out of trouble.

In 2006, he sold a book manuscript, titled “If I Did It,” and a prospective TV interview, giving a “hypothetical” account of murders he had always denied committing. A public outcry ended both projects, but Mr. Goldman’s family secured the book rights, added material imputing guilt to Mr. Simpson and had it published.

In 2007, he was arrested after he and other men invaded a Las Vegas hotel room of some sports memorabilia dealers and took a trove of collectibles. He claimed that the items had been stolen from him, but a jury in 2008 found him guilty of 12 charges, including armed robbery and kidnapping, after a trial that drew only a smattering of reporters and spectators. He was sentenced to nine to 33 years in a Nevada state prison. He served the minimum term and was released in 2017.

Over the years, the story of O.J. Simpson generated a tide of tell-all books, movies, studies and debate over questions of justice, race relations and celebrity in a nation that adores its heroes, especially those cast in rags-to-riches stereotypes, but that has never been comfortable with its deeper contradictions.

There were many in the Simpson saga. Yellowing old newspaper clippings yield the earliest portraits of a postwar child of poverty afflicted with rickets and forced to wear steel braces on his spindly legs, of a hardscrabble life in a bleak housing project and of hanging with teenage gangs in the tough back streets of San Francisco, where he learned to run.

“Running, man, that’s what I do,” he said in 1975, when he was one of America’s best-known and highest-paid football players, the Buffalo Bills’ electrifying, swivel-hipped ball carrier, known universally as the Juice. “All my life I’ve been a runner.”

And so he had — running to daylight on the gridiron of the University of Southern California and in the roaring stadiums of the National Football League for 11 years; running for Hollywood movie moguls, for Madison Avenue image-makers and for television networks; running to pinnacles of success in sports and entertainment.

Along the way, he broke college and professional records, won the Heisman Trophy and was enshrined in pro football’s Hall of Fame. He appeared in dozens of movies and memorable commercials for Hertz and other clients; was a sports analyst for ABC and NBC; acquired homes, cars and a radiant family; and became an American idol — a handsome warrior with the gentle eyes and soft voice of a nice guy. And he played golf.

It was the good life, on the surface. But there was a deeper, more troubled reality — about an infant daughter drowning in the family pool and a divorce from his high school sweetheart; about his stormy marriage to a stunning young waitress and her frequent calls to the police when he beat her; about the jealous rages of a frustrated man.

Calls to the Police

The abuse left Nicole Simpson bruised and terrified on scores of occasions, but the police rarely took substantive action. After one call to the police on New Year’s Day, 1989, officers found her badly beaten and half-naked, hiding in the bushes outside their home. “He’s going to kill me!” she sobbed. Mr. Simpson was arrested and convicted of spousal abuse, but was let off with a fine and probation.

The couple divorced in 1992, but confrontations continued. On Oct. 25, 1993, Ms. Simpson called the police again. “He’s back,” she told a 911 operator, and officers once more intervened.

Then it happened. On June 12, 1994, Ms. Simpson, 35, and Mr. Goldman, 25, were attacked outside her condominium in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, not far from Mr. Simpson’s estate. She was nearly decapitated, and Mr. Goldman was slashed to death.

The knife was never found, but the police discovered a bloody glove at the scene and abundant hair, blood and fiber clues. Aware of Mr. Simpson’s earlier abuse and her calls for help, investigators believed from the start that Mr. Simpson, 46, was the killer. They found blood on his car and, in his home, a bloody glove that matched the one picked up near the bodies. There was never any other suspect.

Five days later, after Mr. Simpson had attended Nicole’s funeral with their two children, he was charged with the murders, but fled in his white Ford Bronco. With his old friend and teammate Al Cowlings at the wheel and the fugitive in the back holding a gun to his head and threatening suicide, the Bronco led a fleet of patrol cars and news helicopters on a slow 60-mile televised chase over the Southern California freeways.

Networks pre-empted prime-time programming for the spectacle, some of it captured by news cameras in helicopters, and a nationwide audience of 95 million people watched for hours. Overpasses and roadsides were crowded with spectators. The police closed highways and motorists pulled over to watch, some waving and cheering at the passing Bronco, which was not stopped. Mr. Simpson finally returned home and was taken into custody.

The ensuing trial lasted nine months, from January to early October 1995, and captivated the nation with its lurid accounts of the murders and the tactics and strategy of prosecutors and of a defense that included the “dream team” of Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. , F. Lee Bailey , Alan M. Dershowitz, Barry Scheck and Robert L. Shapiro.

The prosecution, led by Marcia Clark and Christopher A. Darden, had what seemed to be overwhelming evidence: tests showing that blood, shoe prints, hair strands, shirt fibers, carpet threads and other items found at the murder scene had come from Mr. Simpson or his home, and DNA tests showing that the bloody glove found at Mr. Simpson’s home matched the one left at the crime scene. Prosecutors also had a list of 62 incidents of abusive behavior by Mr. Simpson against his wife.

But as the trial unfolded before Judge Lance Ito and a 12-member jury that included 10 Black people, it became apparent that the police inquiry had been flawed. Photo evidence had been lost or mislabeled; DNA had been collected and stored improperly, raising a possibility that it was tainted. And Detective Mark Fuhrman, a key witness, admitted that he had entered the Simpson home and found the matching glove and other crucial evidence — all without a search warrant.

‘If the Glove Don’t Fit’

The defense argued, but never proved, that Mr. Fuhrman planted the second glove. More damaging, however, was its attack on his history of racist remarks. Mr. Fuhrman swore that he had not used racist language for a decade. But four witnesses and a taped radio interview played for the jury contradicted him and undermined his credibility. (After the trial, Mr. Fuhrman pleaded no contest to a perjury charge. He was the only person convicted in the case.)

In what was seen as the crucial blunder of the trial, the prosecution asked Mr. Simpson, who was not called to testify, to try on the gloves. He struggled to do so. They were apparently too small.

“If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit,” Mr. Cochran told the jury later.

In the end, it was the defense that had the overwhelming case, with many grounds for reasonable doubt, the standard for acquittal. But it wanted more. It portrayed the Los Angeles police as racist, charged that a Black man was being railroaded, and urged the jury to think beyond guilt or innocence and send a message to a racist society.

On the day of the verdict, autograph hounds, T-shirt vendors, street preachers and paparazzi engulfed the courthouse steps. After what some news media outlets had called “The Trial of the Century,” producing 126 witnesses, 1,105 items of evidence and 45,000 pages of transcripts, the jury — sequestered for 266 days, longer than any in California history — deliberated for only three hours.

Much of America came to a standstill. In homes, offices, airports and malls, people paused to watch. Even President Bill Clinton left the Oval Office to join his secretaries. In court, cries of “Yes!” and “Oh, no!” were echoed across the nation as the verdict left many Black people jubilant and many white people aghast.

In the aftermath, Mr. Simpson and the case became the grist for television specials, films and more than 30 books, many by participants who made millions. Mr. Simpson, with Lawrence Schiller, produced “I Want to Tell You,” a thin mosaic volume of letters, photographs and self-justifying commentary that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and earned Mr. Simpson more than $1 million.

He was released after 474 days in custody, but his ordeal was hardly over. Much of the case was resurrected for the civil suit by the Goldman and Brown families. A predominantly white jury with a looser standard of proof held Mr. Simpson culpable and awarded the families $33.5 million in damages. The civil case, which excluded racial issues as inflammatory and speculative, was a vindication of sorts for the families and a blow to Mr. Simpson, who insisted that he had no chance of ever paying the damages.

Mr. Simpson had spent large sums for his criminal defense. Records submitted in the murder trial showed his net worth at about $11 million, and people with knowledge of the case said he had only $3.5 million afterward. A 1999 auction of his Heisman Trophy and other memorabilia netted about $500,000, which went to the plaintiffs. But court records show he paid little of the balance that was owed.

He regained custody of the children he had with Ms. Simpson, and in 2000 he moved to Florida, bought a home south of Miami and settled into a quiet life, playing golf and living on pensions from the N.F.L., the Screen Actors Guild and other sources, about $400,000 a year. Florida laws protect a home and pension income from seizure to satisfy court judgments.

The glamour and lucrative contracts were gone, but Mr. Simpson sent his two children to prep school and college. He was seen in restaurants and malls, where he readily obliged requests for autographs. He was fined once for powerboat speeding in a manatee zone, and once for pirating cable television signals.

In 2006, as the debt to the murder victims’ families grew with interest to $38 million, he was sued by Fred Goldman, the father of Ronald Goldman, who contended that his book and television deal for “If I Did It” had advanced him $1 million and that it had been structured to cheat the family of the damages owed.

The projects were scrapped by News Corporation, parent of the publisher HarperCollins and the Fox Television Network, and a corporation spokesman said Mr. Simpson was not expected to repay an $800,000 advance. The Goldman family secured the book rights from a trustee after a bankruptcy court proceeding and had it published in 2007 under the title “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer.” On the book’s cover, the “If” appeared in tiny type, and the “I Did It” in large red letters.

Another Trial, and Prison

After years in which it seemed he had been convicted in the court of public opinion, Mr. Simpson in 2008 again faced a jury. This time he was accused of raiding a Las Vegas hotel room in 2007 with five other men, most of them convicted criminals and two armed with guns, to steal a trove of sports memorabilia from a pair of collectible dealers.

Mr. Simpson claimed that he was only trying to retrieve items stolen from him, including eight footballs, two plaques and a photo of him with the F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover, and that he had not known about any guns. But four men, who had been arrested with him and pleaded guilty, testified against him, two saying they had carried guns at his request. Prosecutors also played hours of tapes secretly recorded by a co-conspirator detailing the planning and execution of the crime.

On Oct. 3 — 13 years to the day after his acquittal in Los Angeles — a jury of nine women and three men found him guilty of armed robbery, kidnapping, assault, conspiracy, coercion and other charges. After Mr. Simpson was sentenced to a minimum of nine years in prison, his lawyer vowed to appeal, noting that none of the jurors were Black and questioning whether they could be fair to Mr. Simpson after what had happened years earlier. But jurors said the double-murder case was never mentioned in deliberations.

In 2013, the Nevada Parole Board, citing his positive conduct in prison and participation in inmate programs, granted Mr. Simpson parole on several charges related to his robbery conviction. But the board left other verdicts in place. His bid for a new trial was rejected by a Nevada judge, and legal experts said that appeals were unlikely to succeed. He remained in custody until Oct. 1, 2017, when the parole board unanimously granted him parole when he became eligible.

Certain conditions of Mr. Simpson’s parole — travel restrictions, no contacts with co-defendants in the robbery case and no drinking to excess — remained until 2021, when they were lifted, making him a completely free man.

Questions about his guilt or innocence in the murders of his former wife and Mr. Goldman never went away. In May 2008, Mike Gilbert, a memorabilia dealer and former crony, said in a book that Mr. Simpson, high on marijuana, had admitted the killings to him after the trial. Mr. Gilbert quoted Mr. Simpson as saying that he had carried no knife but that he had used one that Ms. Simpson had in her hand when she opened the door. He also said that Mr. Simpson had stopped taking arthritis medicine to let his hands swell so that they would not fit the gloves in court. Mr. Simpson’s lawyer Yale L. Galanter denied Mr. Gilbert’s claims, calling him delusional.

In 2016, more than 20 years after his murder trial, the story of O.J. Simpson was told twice more for endlessly fascinated mass audiences on television. “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” Ryan Murphy’s installment in the “American Crime Story” anthology on FX, focused on the trial itself and on the constellation of characters brought together by the defendant (played by Cuba Gooding Jr.). “O.J.: Made in America,” a five-part, nearly eight-hour installment in ESPN’s “30 for 30” documentary series (it was also released in theaters), detailed the trial but extended the narrative to include a biography of Mr. Simpson and an examination of race, fame, sports and Los Angeles over the previous half-century.

A.O. Scott, in a commentary in The New York Times, called “The People v. O.J. Simpson” a “tightly packed, almost indecently entertaining piece of pop realism, a Dreiser novel infused with the spirit of Tom Wolfe” and said “O.J.: Made in America” had “the grandeur and authority of the best long-form fiction.”

In Leg Braces as a Child

Orenthal James Simpson was born in San Francisco on July 9, 1947, one of four children of James and Eunice (Durden) Simpson. As an infant afflicted with the calcium deficiency rickets, he wore leg braces for several years but outgrew his disability. His father, a janitor and cook, left the family when the child was 4, and his mother, a hospital nurse’s aide, raised the children in a housing project in the tough Potrero Hill district.

As a teenager, Mr. Simpson, who hated the name Orenthal and called himself O.J., ran with street gangs. But at 15 he was introduced by a friend to Willie Mays, the renowned San Francisco Giants outfielder. The encounter was inspirational and turned his life around, Mr. Simpson recalled. He joined the Galileo High School football team and won All-City honors in his senior year.

In 1967, Mr. Simpson married his high school sweetheart, Marguerite Whitley. The couple had three children, Arnelle, Jason and Aaren. Shortly after their divorce in 1979, Aaren, 23 months old, fell into a swimming pool at home and died a week later.

Mr. Simpson married Nicole Brown in 1985; the couple had a daughter, Sydney, and a son, Justin. He is survived by Arnelle, Jason, Sydney and Justin Simpson and three grandchildren, his lawyer Malcolm P. LaVergne said.

After being released from prison in Nevada in 2017, Mr. Simpson moved into the Las Vegas country club home of a wealthy friend, James Barnett, for what he assumed would be a temporary stay. But he found himself enjoying the local golf scene and making friends, sometimes with people who introduced themselves to him at restaurants, Mr. LaVergne said. Mr. Simpson decided to remain in Las Vegas full time. At his death, he lived right on the course of the Rhodes Ranch Golf Club.

From his youth, Mr. Simpson was a natural on the gridiron. He had dazzling speed, power and finesse in a broken field that made him hard to catch, let alone tackle. He began his collegiate career at San Francisco City College, scoring 54 touchdowns in two years. In his third year he transferred to Southern Cal, where he shattered records — rushing for 3,423 yards and 36 touchdowns in 22 games — and led the Trojans into the Rose Bowl in successive years. He won the Heisman Trophy as the nation’s best college football player of 1968. Some magazines called him the greatest running back in the history of the college game.

His professional career was even more illustrious, though it took time to get going. The No. 1 draft pick in 1969, Mr. Simpson went to the Buffalo Bills — the league’s worst team had the first pick — and was used sparingly in his rookie season; in his second, he was sidelined with a knee injury. But by 1971, behind a line known as the Electric Company because they “turned on the Juice,” he began breaking games open.

In 1973, Mr. Simpson became the first to rush for over 2,000 yards, breaking a record held by Jim Brown, and was named the N.F.L.’s most valuable player. In 1975, he led the American Football Conference in rushing and scoring. After nine seasons, he was traded to the San Francisco 49ers, his hometown team, and played his last two years with them. He retired in 1979 as the highest-paid player in the league, with a salary over $800,000, having scored 61 touchdowns and rushed for more than 11,000 yards in his career. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.

Mr. Simpson’s work as a network sports analyst overlapped with his football years. He was a color commentator for ABC from 1969 to 1977, and for NBC from 1978 to 1982. He rejoined ABC on “Monday Night Football” from 1983 to 1986.

Actor and Pitchman

And he had a parallel acting career. He appeared in some 30 films as well as television productions, including the mini-series “Roots” (1977) and the movies “The Towering Inferno” (1974), “Killer Force” (1976), “Cassandra Crossing” (1976), “Capricorn One” (1977), “Firepower” (1979) and others, including the comedy “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad” (1988) and its two sequels.

He did not pretend to be a serious actor. “I’m a realist,” he said. “No matter how many acting lessons I took, the public just wouldn’t buy me as Othello.”

Mr. Simpson was a congenial celebrity. He talked freely to reporters and fans, signed autographs, posed for pictures with children and was self-effacing in interviews, crediting his teammates and coaches, who clearly liked him. In an era of Black power displays, his only militancy was to crack heads on the gridiron.

His smiling, racially neutral image, easygoing manner and almost universal acceptance made him a perfect candidate for endorsements. Even before joining the N.F.L., he signed deals, including a three-year, $250,000 contract with Chevrolet. He later endorsed sporting goods, soft drinks, razor blades and other products.

In 1975, Hertz made him the first Black star of a national television advertising campaign. Memorable long-running commercials depicted him sprinting through airports and leaping over counters to get to a Hertz rental car. He earned millions, Hertz rentals shot up and the ads made O.J.’s face one of the most recognizable in America.

Mr. Simpson, in a way, wrote his own farewell on the day of his arrest. As he rode in the Bronco with a gun to his head, a friend, Robert Kardashian, released a handwritten letter to the public that he had left at home, expressing love for Ms. Simpson and denying that he killed her. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he wrote. “I’ve had a great life, great friends. Please think of the real O.J. and not this lost person.”

Alex Traub contributed reporting.

An earlier version of this obituary referred incorrectly to the glove that was an important piece of evidence in Mr. Simpson’s murder trial. It was not a golf glove. The error was repeated in a picture caption.

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Robert D. McFadden is a Times reporter who writes advance obituaries of notable people. More about Robert D. McFadden