Description
Flipkart is a Singaporean e-commerce company headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. The company initially focused on book sales, before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, home essentials, groceries, and lifestyle products.
The service competes primarily with Amazon's Indian subsidiary, and domestic rival, Snapdeal. As of March 2017, Flipkart held a 39.5% market share of India's e-commerce industry. Flipkart has a dominant position in the apparel segment bolstered by its acquisition of Myntra and was described as being "neck and neck" with Amazon in the sale of electronics and mobile phones. Flipkart also owns PhonePe, a mobile payments service based on the Unified Payments Interface.
In August 2018, U.S.-based retail chain Walmart acquired an 81% controlling stake in Flipkart for US$16 billion, valuing the company at $20 billion.
History
Flipkart was founded in October 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, who were both alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and formerly worked for Amazon. The company initially focused on online book sales with country-wide shipping. Following its launch, Flipkart slowly grew in prominence; by 2008, it was receiving 100 orders per day. In 2010, Flipkart acquired the Bangalore-based social book discovery service WeRead from Lulu.com.
