Flipkart is thinking to bring IPO, no timeline for it yet

Indian E-commerce website which has the majority stake of US retail giant Walmart is eyeing to bring it initial public offering in the market as the Brett Biggs, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Walmart gave a statement that Flipkart’s initial public offering (IPO) is on the cards but there is no specific timeline for it as of now.

“IPO and letting our associates have a piece of the business, having it to be a more local business in India – all those things are important to us, longer term. And nothing about that has changed.” Biggs said at the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer & Retail Conference recently and he further added that “The (Flipkart) business is performing almost exactly like we thought it would. An IPO is still very much on the cards for that business.”

Earlier the Flipkart Group had agreed to acquire a majority stake in online pharmacy Sastasundar Marketplace. It was done to launch its own healthcare business amid a pandemic-triggered consolidation in India’s health-tech industry by leveraging the Walmart Inc.-controlled company’s pan-India network.

As per Walmart International President and CEO Judith McKenna, Both Flipkart and payment app PhonePe continue to do well. “We always made it clear from the day we made the acquisition or the investment, that we would be open to an IPO,” had said McKenna earlier while speaking at the DB Access Global Consumer Conference on June 7.

Founded in 2007, Flipkart was acquired by Walmart over three years ago. The company offers more than 150 million products in 80 categories with an enrolled client base of 300 million and expected gross product esteem at $12 billion in FY20. It has been gauging an IPO in the US the beyond couple of quarters.

Walmart drove a $1.2-billion round in Flipkart last year in July, esteeming the firm at $24.9 billion. The world’s biggest retailer is engaging Amazon India, Reliance’s JioMart and the Tata bunch for predominance in India’s e-commerce market through Flipkart, which it purchased for $16 billion in 2018. India’s web-based market is projected to take off to $1 trillion in the following few years.