The year 2014 has been the year of funds and financing. Snapdeal received funds in fragments like the $100 million from Azim Premji and other investors, Ratan Tata’s investment and $627 million from Japanese Group SoftBank, which would be the single biggest investment by a single investor in an ecommerce company in India.
Flipkart received $1 billion funding earlier this year, which raised the bar for everyone else and made everyone sit on the edges of their seats wondering where Flipkart would be headed. Flipkart was valued at more than $5 billion after this.
Flipkart seems to have raised the bar higher now with reports of another round of financing that’s been finalized for the ecommerce giant. If reports are to be believed, another $500-600 million is on the way to Flipkart’s kitty, so that it can equip itself to fight out arch rivals Snapdeal and Amazon in the ecommerce race. With $50-100 million each from existing investors like Tiger Global, Naspers and DST Global, a new investor also has contributed in the fresh round of financing.
Although an official announcement is yet to be made, this decision was formalized in the company’s board meet at Singapore recently. This is the company’s third fund-raise of the year.
“Although there was a lot of interest from new investors, Flipkart was not keen on raising more money at this point. This new round is largely being done by the large existing investors,” said a source. There was no participation from earlier investors this time.
After the latest round of financing, Flipkart would be valued at $10 billion, making it at par with others like Snapchat, Uber and Dropbox, the world’s most valued privately help tech start-ups.
After dwindling with her family business, into travel and hospitality, for more than 3 years, Pooja Vishant found her true love in writing. Happy-go-lucky and cheerful, she loves pink; so pink is the way to go if you want to get into her good books. The Associate Editor keeps track of even a leaf that has moved in the ecommerce world!
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