Flipkart Acquires Smartphone Repair And Refurbishing Startup Yaantra

Walmart-backed Flipkart Group has acquired electronics recommerce startup Yaantra to strengthen its recommerce business and enhance after-sale offerings for its customers in the smartphone segment. 

Yaantra, founded in 2013 by Jayant Jha, Ankit Saraf and Anmol Gupta, is a platform that repairs and sells refurbished consumer tech products such as smartphones and laptops. With this acquisition, Flipkart will provide a comprehensive service ecosystem to its customers that take care of the entire lifecycle of smartphones.

As per Jha, the refurbished smartphone market in India is around $4 Bn – $5 Bn in size. Almost 95% of the market is still unorganised. However, the segment is growing at a rapid pace. 

As part of this acquisition, Yaantra’s team will help Flipkart build capabilities in this domain and accelerate its recommerce scale-up plans. The business will report to Prakash Sikaria, senior vice president and head of Flipkart’s Growth Charter.

Jayant Jha, cofounder & chief executive officer at Yaantra, said, “At this juncture, we are delighted to join forces with the Flipkart Group as we share a common objective of making technology affordable and available for all. We believe this association will prove to be a game-changer in making the Indian refurbished market a success.”

 “Through the acquisition of Yaantra, we are enhancing our capabilities in a domain that is critical for the growth of the digital economy in India, as well as developing a comprehensive service ecosystem to support its expansion,” said Ravi Iyer, senior vice president and head- corporate development, Flipkart.

Delhi-based Cashify, Quickr, Budli and ElectronicBazaar are a few startups that have been quite popular when it comes to refurbished product buying in India. Besides, Amazon has its own refurbished platform by the name Amazon Refurbished. Ecommerce startup Shopclues too sells refurbished products. And 2GUD by Flipkart is a segregated platform for such products. Now, with the acquisition of Yaantra, it is to be seen whether Flipkart merges its 2GUD platform with Yaantra.

Last week, we saw Flipkart receiving a fresh investment of $233 Mn (INR 1,736 Cr) from its Singapore holding company. The investment was believed to bolster its grocery business through the social commerce venture Shopsy which has recently entered the grocery business to take on BigBasket, Blinkit, Zepto, Instamart, among others.

Over the years, Flipkart has acquired more than 15 startups. Some of the names include online travel aggregator Cleartrip being acquired in April 2021, online pharmacy startup SastaSundar in November 2021, mobile gaming startup Mech Mocha Game Studios was bought in November 2020. In the same month, it bought another augmented reality (AR) startup Scapic.