Flipkart Company

Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, two buddies, founded Flipkart. Flipkart was founded in Bangalore, India, in 2007. They have the same surname but are not related, which is unusual. Sachin Bansal was born in Chandigarh, India, in 1981. Sachin graduated with a degree in computer engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi in 2005, where he met Binny Bansal, the other founder of Flipkart. Sachin worked for Techspan after college and then for Amazon Web Services as a Senior Software Engineer in 2006.

On the other hand, Binny Bansal was born in the Indian city of Chandigarh in the year 1982. Binny, like Sachin, earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from IIT in 2005. That's where Binny and Sachin's friendship started. Binny joined Sarnoff Corporation after graduating, but in 2007 he also joined Amazon Web Services.

Sachin and Binny first considered establishing a comparison search engine in 2007. They perceived a large void in the e-commerce business in India at the time and abandoned their jobs at Amazon Web Services to launch Flipkart, an e-commerce site. Because it was difficult to find vendors of technology, clothes, or household things in India at the time, even booksellers couldn't place their total trust in an Internet-based service like Flipkart at first. Flipkart began its adventure by selling books with an initial investment of Rs 400,000. Sachin Bansal was appointed as the company's CEO at that time. The company began operations in a two-room flat in Bangalore in 2008 and quickly garnered a following among book lovers. Flipkart's prominence drew the attention of investors, and in 2009, the company received a financial investment of $1 million from Accel Partners, an investing firm. The company employed around 150 people and had three offices throughout India. They were able to sell Rs 40 million worth of books at the end of the year.

Emergence of Flipkart

Flipkart purchased the Bangalore-based social book discovery service "WeRead" in 2010 after Tiger Global invested $10 million in the company. Flipkart began selling mobile phones in the electronics area when the popularity of book sales increased.

For the first time in India, the corporation used a cash-on-delivery method after failing to obtain the desired results. As a result, consumers gained trust in the company, and Flipkart's sales increased. Their sales were Rs 750 million at the start of Fiscal Year 2011, and they bought Mime360, a digital content platform, in the same year.

Flipkart started its music streaming service, Flyte, in 2012 to increase its online music streaming services business. However, the service was canceled the next year due to a lack of interest. In the same year, the company paid roughly Rs 12.5 billion for the online electronics shop Letsbuy, boosting their business even more. Flipkart raised a total of $2 billion in 2014 from Tiger Global, Accel Partners, and other investors. Flipkart purchased Indian e-commerce business Myntra for $330 million in the same year, adding it to their Fashion & Lifestyle division. The company's revenue was Rs 28.4 billion at the end of the year. Tencent, eBay, and Microsoft invested $1.4 billion in Flipkart in April 2017, valuing the firm at $11.6 billion. Flipkart bought India's UPI-based payment start-up PhonePe for an unknown sum in the same year. In August, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank invested $2.5 billion of its Vision fund in the company, which had a revenue of over Rs 156 billion at the end of the year.

Flipkart was the most popular online retailer in India in 2018, with 31.9 percent of the market share, followed by Amazon with 31.2 percent. Flipkart's market share climbed to 38.3 percent, thanks to combined sales from Myntra and Jabong. Flipkart launched the "Flipkart Video" in-app streaming service in 2019 to compete with Amazon's premium video streaming service, Amazon Prime. Flipkart established a digital platform for kiranas and local MSMEs in April 2020, which will make it easier for micro-market B2B and B2C enterprises to operate. Flipkart paid Rs 2.6 billion in July of that year for a 27% share in Arvind Youth Brands, a subsidiary of Arvind Fashions Ltd. The company's entire revenue, according to Statista, was Rs 346.1 billion by the end of 2020.

Flipkart has maintained consistent revenue growth year after year since its launch. There is a lot of potential for e-commerce in India because of the country's growing middle class and a growing number of internet users. Recognizing that Walmart's investment in Flipkart was a smart move. On the other hand, Flipkart is up against Amazon, a world-class global e-commerce behemoth that has been giving the company a run for its money. There isn't much of a market share gap between the two companies. Since it entered the Indian market in 2013, Flipkart has tried to establish a reputation and grow its market share. Furthermore, in the Indian fashion and lifestyle and affordable smartphone segments, Flipkart dominates the market.