Google Invests in Flipkart Online Shop, Worth $350 M

Google invests in Flipkart online shop, an e-commerce company based in India with an investment of around $350 million.

Google is the most recent prominent entity to invest approximately $350 million in Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce venture owned by Walmart. 

As part of the agreement, the Android developer will also provide cloud services to Flipkart, the Bengaluru-based startup said in a terse statement on Friday. Initiated in 2023, the Google investment is a component of a funding round of nearly $1 billion devoted to Flipkart. Walmart, which invested $600 million in the company late last year, has led the funding round. Additionally, Microsoft has invested in Flipkart.

The new investment values Flipkart at $36 billion; it dominates the e-commerce market in India, catering to hundreds of millions of customers in smaller cities and villages. Bernstein estimates that the startup, which also owns the fashion e-commerce startup Myntra, controls approximately 48% of the Indian e-commerce market. 

In addition to Amazon, Reliance Retail, and SoftBank-backed Meesho, Flipkart faces competition from an expanding array of quick-commerce applications. Under the leadership of Asia’s wealthiest man, Mukesh Ambani, Reliance Retail manages the largest retail chain in India and is progressively endeavoring to establish an online presence. In a roughly $2 billion investment last year, QIA, ADIA, and KKR agreed to value Reliance Retail at $100 billion. 

Bernstein estimates that the e-commerce market in India will be worth $133 billion by the following year. 

“In the realms of quick, social, and vertical commerce, challengers are emerging in Indian e-commerce.” Due to their category-specific strengths, Amazon and Flipkart remain market leaders in mobiles, consumer electronics, and appliances. “However, as they scale up, category leaders such as Blinkit (quick commerce), Meesho (tier 2+ markets), and Nykaa (vertical commerce) are more likely to emerge in India, in contrast to the large horizontal winners in the global e-commerce market,” Bernstein analysts wrote in a recent note. 

Google, whose user base in India exceeds 550 million, considers the South Asian country a significant international market. The organization disclosed its intention to allocate $10 billion toward Indian enterprises in 2020. It has since invested an additional $1 billion in Airtel and $4.5 billion in telecom operator Jio Platforms.