Walmart purchased approximately 77 percent of Flipkart for about $16 billion in 2018.
Flipkart was founded in Bengaluru in 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal. It began as an online bookstore and expanded into a broad Indian e-commerce marketplace. The Walmart transaction valued Flipkart at roughly $20 billion overall and represented Walmart’s major entry into India’s rapidly growing digital retail market.
The deal did not mean that Walmart bought all Indian e-commerce companies. Flipkart remained a distinct business, and Walmart became its controlling shareholder. Google parent Alphabet and other investors also participated in the financing connected with the transaction.
The acquisition is often compared with Amazon’s competition in India. Walmart’s strategy centered on Flipkart’s local market knowledge, logistics network, customer base, and payments ecosystem. The purchase was announced in May 2018 and completed later that year.