Flipkart raises $1 billion fresh funds to give competition to Amazon

The Indian E-Commerce company Flipkart has been in the business for a long time with not much competition. But with Amazon.com pressing hard to take market share in the world’s second most populous country, Flipkart has much to worry over.

It has been recently revealed by Flipkart that it has raised $1 billion in order to give tough competition to Amazon. The E-commerce market is an emerging market in a country like India as there is a major shift going on in the manner and style of purchases recently. People are going online more and more to buy products. Flipkart has grown rapidly over the years because of it’s timely delivery of products and customer support.

Flipkart said that the fund was raised through the existing investors which include Tiger Global Management along with the new backers namely Singapore sovereign-wealth fund GIC and Morgan Stanley Investment Management who had agreed to give themoney. However flipkart was never such a large corporation initially. It was founded by the former Amazon employees, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal. Originally an online bookseller, Flipkart now has more than 22 million registered users and has 3000 merchants selling products ranging from electronics to clothes and sporting goods.

The growth of Flipkart has been tremendous in the last 12 months specifically as it reported a sale of more than $1 billion through its website. As India is a market with exceptional possibilities all the global players are trying to find a place here. Amazon has already made its presence known and ebay.com backed Snapdeal.com is also catching up. The mere fact that Flipkart was able to raise $1 billion and its valuation standing at $5 billion is a good sign for Indian E-commerce industry.