BENGALURU (Reuters) – Indian e-commerce firm Flipkart’s biggest shareholder Walmart is set to infuse about $600 million in a new fundraise for the startup, a Flipkart spokesperson said on Thursday.
Flipkart is in talks to raise a total of $1 billion in fresh funds, the Economic Times reported earlier in the day, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
New investors are also in talks to join the round and the latest funding is likely to value the Indian firm at a premium of about 5% to 10% to its current valuation of $33 billion, the ET report said.
That would still be shy of the near-$38 billion valuation that the company hit in 2021.
Walmart did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The U.S. retail giant has been accelerating its growth in India since 2018, when it bought a 77% stake in Flipkart for about $16 billion, its biggest investment. Two years later, it committed to importing $10 billion of goods from India each year by 2027.
Early this year, it increased its control in Flipkart by buying out hedge fund Tiger Global and venture capital firm Accel’s remaining stakes for $1.4 billion. It was not clear what Walmart’s stake was after the purchase.
Flipkart has grown to become one of India’s top online marketplaces, focusing on small towns and cities, unlike rival Amazon, which has more of an urban bend.
In 2022, Flipkart pushed back its plans to go public to 2023 and internally raised its IPO valuation target by around a third to $60-$70 billion, two sources with direct knowledge of the plan told Reuters.
(Reporting by Ashish Chandra and Navamya Ganesh Acharya in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
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