Flipkart
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.
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Flipkart: 2008-14
Rags to riches: Flipkart’s journey from Rs 4,00,000 to $5-6 billion
The Times of India Business Insider | Jul 31, 2014
In the biggest fund-raising ever for an Indian e-commerce company, in 2014 Flipkart attracted a whopping $1 billion from its existing investors Tiger Global Management and Naspers.
As per industry experts, the Bangalore-based company is now valued at somewhere between $5 and $6 billion — double the estimated value of $2.5-3 billion in May this year.
Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal want to make Flipkart the country's first Internet company to be valued at $100 billion.
Flipkart has till now garnered almost $1.7 billion as it battles Amazon and Snapdeal for the top slot.
The rise: a timeline
The Times of India presents a timeline of Flipkart's funding — how within seven years a company that founders started off with just Rs 400,000 — is now worth thousands of crores.
October 14, 2008: Co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal start Flipkart with a capital of Rs 400,000
July 15, 2010: Tiger Global joins with an investment of $10 million
June 16, 2011: The company announces new logo and gets another investment of $20 million by Tiger Global
August 24, 2012: Investment of $150 million by Tiger Global and Naspers group, crosses gross sales of Rs 100 crore
July 10, 2013: Attracts investment of $200 million from Tiger Global, Naspers, Accel Partners and Iconiq Capital, crosses single-day shipment of 1.3 lakh
October 9, 2013: Another investment of $160 million by Dragoneer Investment Group, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Sofina, Vulcan Capital and Tiger Global
May 26, 2014: Flipkart acquires Myntra
July 29, 2014: Attracted a whopping $1 billion from Tiger Global Management and Naspers
Just a day after Flipkart announced raising $1 billion, e-commerce giant Amazon, too, announced that it will invest an additional $2 billion in India to expand its growth in the country.
The Bansals’ net worth
Bansals nearly as rich as Infy co-founders
The Times of India Jul 30 2014 Anshul Dhamija & Samidha Sharma Bangalore TNN
Flipkart Founders’ Combined Net Worth $1Bn
The Bansals of Flipkart—Sachin and Binny —now boast of a combined net worth in excess of $1 billion, inching closer to that of Bangalore’s iconic tech billionaires N R Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani of Infosys.
The fresh $1-billion fund raise values the Bansals’ combined stake of approximately 15% at over Rs 6,000 crore. The four-member Murthy family has a net worth of around Rs 8,700 crore in India’s second largest IT services company, while the Nilekani family’s net worth stands at Rs 6,500 crore.
Consumer internet ventures have been getting fabulous valuations. The US and Chinese internet markets have fostered many billionaire entrepreneurs as their ventures went public. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has a net worth of $33 billion, while Alibaba's founder Jack Ma has a $12.5 billion net worth, up $8.9 billion year-todate, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The Bansals, who are not related, have a higher net worth than Infosys' co-founder and outgoing CEO S D Shibulal, who along with his family holds shares worth Rs 4,300 crore in the company . Infosys' other co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan's family has a net worth of around Rs 6,500 crore, as of Tuesday .
“On paper the Bansals personal wealth is a great story , but we will have to wait for a listing to see their actual net worth,“ said an investment banker who did not want to be named. Infosys is now into its fourth decade and has a market cap of about $30 billion.
Flipkart’s $7 billion valuation story has been scripted in just seven years, and the Bansals are now talking of creating a $100-billion e-commerce company.
From 2011 to 2014, Flipkart grew its sales from $10 million to an annualized $2 billion, an over 100 times growth in three years. There is a huge revolution in e-commerce in India, with the future of retailing coming from the internet, said the Bansals while announcing their latest fund raise. The Bansals believe that in the next 10 years, India would have several $100 billion companies in the internet space. “Flipkart is much bigger today than we or our investors had ever imagined,” Sachin Bansal said.
