Google is investing nearly $350 million in Flipkart, becoming the latest high-profile brand to back the Walmart-owned Indian e-commerce startup.
As a part of the deal, the Android maker may also provide cloud services to the Bengaluru-based startup, Flipkart said in a transient statement on Friday. Google’s investment is a part of a nearly $1 billion funding round that Flipkart began in 2023. Walmart is leading this round, having invested $600 million in it late last 12 months.
Flipkart, valued at over $33 billion, is the e-commerce market leader in India, serving a whole bunch of tens of millions of consumers in smaller cities. Flipkart, which also owns e-commerce fashion startup Myntra, controls about 48% of India’s e-commerce market, in accordance with Bernstein.
It competes with SoftBank-backed Reliance Retail, Amazon and Meesho – in addition to a growing variety of fast trading apps. Reliance Retail – run by Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani – runs India’s largest retail chain and is increasingly attempting to create an e-commerce game. Reliance Retail was valued at $100 billion last 12 months with nearly $2 billion in investments from QIA, ADIA and KKR.
Google, which reaches greater than half a billion people in India, identifies the South Asian country as a key overseas market. The company revealed plans to speculate $10 billion in Indian firms in 2020 (it has since invested $4.5 billion in telecom operator Jio Platforms and one other $1 billion in Airtel).