India's largest e-commerce marketplace Flipkart is in talks to raise $1.5 billion from investors like Microsoft, eBay, Paypal and Tencent at a valuation of $10-$12 billion, reports Mint citing sources.On Monday, Flipkart had announced a broad strategic partnership with Microsoft, both of which share a common rival in Amazon. As a first step, the e-tailer had adopted Microsoft Azure as its exclusive public cloud platform.
The company had said that Microsoft Azure will add a layer of advanced cloud technologies and analytics to its existing data centres. It also stated plans of leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics capabilities in Azure, such as Cortana Intelligence Suite and Power BI, to optimize its data for merchandising, advertising, marketing and customer service.
Flipkart had last raised funding in July 2015 at a $15 billion valuation, however the company has faced a series of significant markdowns from its mutual fund investors over the past year or two. The company declined to comment on this development to the publication.
ET had reported in January that India's most valuable tech company had begun talks with eBay after its talks with Walmart for a possible investment had failed to fructify. The company could settle for a valuation of $10-12 billion, sources had told ET at the time.
Flipkart was also planning to cut its monthly expenditure by half to about $20 million from about $45 million burn rate in mid-2016, ET reported in January.
This is critical for the e-commerce major as it fights to retain its lead in the Indian market over Amazon, while also bracing for the entry of China’s Alibaba. Snagging a large strategic investor is expected to help meet these goals.
That said, India's online retail industry is also witnessing slowing growth in the number of online buyers and gross sales. US research firm Forrester had slashed projections for online retailing in India by more than a third to $48 billion by 2020, from $75 billion estimated last year.
0 comments:
Post a Comment