Riding On Ecommerce Boom, Flipkart’s Revenue Soars By 25% To INR 43,356 Cr In FY21

Walmart-backed ecommerce giant Flipkart has posted a consolidated loss after tax worth INR 2,445.6 Cr in the financial year ending March 31, 2021. 

Flipkart which locks its horn with the US ecommerce mammoth Amazon, has managed to narrow its loss by 22% in FY21 from INR 3,150 Cr in FY20. 

In total revenue, Flipkart clocked INR 43,356.5 Cr, a 25% rise from INR 34,586 Cr it posted in FY20. 

While Flipkart posted INR 42941.7 Cr in revenue from operations, a 25% rise from last year, its other income clocked at INR 414 Cr. 

Flipkart saw its expense rise to INR 45,801 Cr in FY21 from INR 37,736 Cr in FY20. Among its expenses, its purchase of stock -in-trade was the highest with INR 47,629 Cr in FY21. Flipkart used INR 385 Cr for employee benefits exchange, a mere rise on the same head from INR 309 Cr in FY20. 

Flipkart has also raised the highest funding round ever with $3.6 Bn at a valuation of $37.6 Bn post a successful FY21 compelling one of the largest venture capital–Japan’s SoftBank to reinvest in it after exiting the company in 2018. 

Founded by Sachin and Binny Bansal in 2007, Flipkart has been one of the early ecommerce marketplaces in the country. The Bengaluru-headquartered company after competing against the likes of Amazon, IPO-bound Snapdeal, social commerce giant Meesho, got acquired by US-based retail giant Walmart for $16 Bn in 2018. 

Flipkart at present claims to have over 375K sellers/resellers and is serving over 150 Mn users in the country. 

One of the primary reasons behind Flipkart reducing its loss is because of the overall rise in online shopping among Indian consumers in the backdrop of the raging pandemic. 

Prolonged lockdowns along with the fear of catching the virus while shopping from stores, has further benefited the ecommerce industry. Though the month of April saw a significant drop in customer spending in the ecommerce industry as per a Statista report, the spending has only gone north by the end of the year. It has to be noted that India has imposed its first lockdown at the end of March 2020. 

Besides, Flipkart’s strategy of serving Tier III cities also helped in grabbing a larger pie of share in the ecommerce market.

As per a report by Bobble.ai, which has processed data from 50 Mn smartphones, Indian ecommerce business has surged 77% between 2020 and 2021 with more transactions happening in Tier II and III cities.