Flipkart to Raise About $ 1.5 Bn at a Valuation of $10 Bn

In just 3 months of raising whooping $ 1 Bn round, Flipkart is now all set to raise another big round of funding, which will value the seven year old company at over $10 Bn, reports WSJ. However, the amount Flipkart is raising is still not clear, but according to a report by ET, Flipkart will be raising over $1.5 Bn in this round.

A new investor along-with its existing investors including Tiger Global Management, Accel Partners and DST Global, run by billionaire Yuri Milner are expected to participate in this fund raise. “The fund-raising process is expected to begin in January 2015,” according to a source.

Launched in 2007, Flipkart has raised over $1.8 Bn in total, of which it has raised about $1.57 Bn in the last 15 months.

To make a mark in the online shopping scene and bringing people on its platform to shop, Flipkart’s major chunk goes into discounting with promotions, which costs it about INR 70 Cr. each month. During this festive season, it shipped about INR 80 lakh which is about INR 30 lakh more than its average, this made Flipkart to revise its internal targets to reach sales of $ 4 Bn by the end of this year.

Read: Flipkart In The Spotlight Again For Selling Copyright Infringing Products

Started with selling books, Flipkart now offers about 20 Mn products across 70+ categories including Books, Media, Consumer Electronics and Lifestyle with about 26 Mn registered users clocking over 6 Mn daily visits.

According to a source, Flipkart is much more focused on promoting its in-house brands. It already has its range of tablets and digital accessories i.e. Digiflip, apparel i.e. Flippd and home appliances and personal healthcare products under the brand Citron. In fashion segment, Myntra has about 10 in-house brands accounts for about 20% of its overall sales.

The online retailer is expected to launch furniture and packaged food very soon.

As Flipkart can’t provide each kind of service of its own, thus from time to time it is trying to get into partnerships or is investing in startups which could provide additional services to its customers. Thus, now a chunk of its funds is also going into this. Earlier, it has also appointed former Canaan Partners associate Nishant Verman as its M&A head.

In case of the its in-house home appliances and electronics items, its partnership with Jeeves Consumer Services Pvt. Ltd, a company which provides after-sales services for home appliances and electronics items including DVD player, TV, washing machine, food processor or laptop in a hassle free manner will be a value add.

Previously, it invested in ngpay to drive innovation in payments, with its features and products that provide a competitive end-to-end customer experience to its customers.

As per our sources, it is in talks with few other startups as well to invest or to get into strategic partnerships.

Related: 9 Startups That Flipkart Should Look To Buyout

The Indian ecommerce space is getting much more competitive with Snapdeal raising $627 Mn from Softbank, taking the total funds raised by it to $1 Bn this year and Amazon investment in its Indian operations, thus it is really difficult for anyone to guess who will be the clear leader in the Indian ecommerce segment.