Flipkart Leverages PhonePe And MakeMyTrip Association, Add New Tabs On Its App

Flipkart has recently added two new tabs- ‘Recharge’ and ‘Travel’ on its mobile application. While the recharge tab is redirecting the customer to PhonePe application, the second travel tab lands customers on MakeMyTrip respectively.

As shared by the company in a media statement, the move comes in line with its aim to increase customer visits on the mobile application of Flipkart.

“We are aggressively building a deeper portfolio of offerings based on our customers’ needs. For the same, we are partnering with market leaders like MakeMyTrip and PhonePe. Customers in the meanwhile get seamless experience without having to download an additional app or create a user account. It’s a win-win for the ecosystem and users,” said a Flipkart spokesperson to Inc42.

PhonePe is the digital payment subsidiary of Flipkart which it acquired in 2016. Also, earlier, in April this year, Flipkart and MakeMyTrip had announced their strategic partnership to leverage the former’s customer base and the latter’s brands including MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, and redBus.

As Inc42 reported in January this year, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy’s focus is currently on increasing the monthly active consumers from the existing 10 Mn to 80 Mn in the coming years.

According to reports, this new development has come when all the companies in the consumer internet space, including the Alibaba backed Paytm are looking to tap into high-frequency purchases.

Other Plans Of Flipkart

Post announcing its acquisition deal with Walmart, Flipkart has been moving at quite a rapid pace to penetrate deeper into its targeted consumer segment.

In line with this, the company has been adopting various strategies and is introducing new consumer-oriented features.

For instance, earlier, in June this year, Flipkart had made another bet on its customer loyalty programme.

Rather than charging an upfront fee for the membership, the customer loyalty programme will be activated once a customer hits a certain threshold of purchases.T he scheme is expected to be launched by the end of July 2018.

Apart from these, here are a few other targets for Flipkart in the current financial year:

• Flipkart has planned to double its annualised sales from digital advertising to roughly $200 Mn by March 2019. The annualised sales figure implies that Flipkart will generate sales of $16-17 Mn in March 2019. The company has planned to woo advertisers from sectors such as banking and financial services, areas where the online retailer does not have a presence.

• Furthermore, Flipkart is now looking to place its bet on the Indian fintech market which is said to be worth $2.4 Bn by 2020. In a recent development, the company had applied for an NBFC (Non Banking Financial Company) licence to focus on consumer lending.

• The company is planning to take a hybrid approach, looking to take a good chunk of the loan book while also creating a curated marketplace of lenders.

• Additionally, the Walmart-Flipkart deal is expected to get completed by June 2019. If reports are to be believed, the US giant has set a target for June 7, 2019, to complete the process of arranging funds for the Flipkart deal through a bond sale.

Currently, the stakeholders of the Walmart-Flipkart deal have been addressing competition concerns raised by the Competition Commission of India as well as are busy in handling the issues raised by the tax authorities.

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