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Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle
- dmitriid 9y agoSoftBank. Tencent. The world is increasingly being controlled by a handful of companies.
- throwaway6497 9y agoWalmart was forced to pay $15 Billion by Amazon, I think. Amazon-India is already a force to reckon with in India. They have a ton of customer love in India, and they are killing it. There is no reason for them to buy Flipkart. They did the required to hurt their competitor by feigning interest. Bezos is a master at deception. Well played, Bezos and Flipkart investors. Stingy Walmart has to cough up more money.
- dominotw 9y agoI agree with amazon killing it. I used to shop both on flipkart and amazon. Now I just shop on Amazon. At some point I just stopped checking flipkart.
- piyush_soni 9y agoSame here. I think the reason was the amazing customer service at Amazon, and mostly the effective price on Amazon was always lower.
- actuator 9y agoI think Prime also killed it. Fast deliveries and no minimum amount ended up making Amazon the first choice in my head.
- intended 9y agoDidn’t someone calculate that prime prices were too low and will rise (and were already rising)?
- meko 9y agoUntil they become a monopoly and all that good customer service dissolves down the drain. It's already happening in the US.
- ryanmarsh 9y agoThank god I haven’t had that happen yet. I’ve had Amazon give above-and-beyond customer service twice recently. They gave me discounts and credits I wasn’t even asking for. I hope it doesn’t go down the drain but I suppose at some point it’s bound to happen.
- ekianjo 9y agowe keep hearing this yet there is hardly good evidence for this. And if if occurs then more opportiunities open for their competitors.
- beiller 9y agoHow about cable companies? Some argue Amazon is subsidized in the same way, by having USPS shipping cheaply to the outskirts.
- seshagiric 9y agoIf Walmart pays a large amount, it is still advantageous to Amazon but does not look like that was the only ploy. Amazon may have actually tried hard to prevent Walmart gain a foothold in online retail. Flipkart is reported as the largest or 2nd largest online retailer in India, to prevent that volume going to Walmart Amazon may have tried hard and pushed price in the process.
- mtgx 9y agoThat may be so, but now that it can afford it, Amazon has every intention of becoming a monopoly in the markets it enters. It's why they bought the #1 retailer in the Middle East, too: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-amazon-souq-20170328-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-amazon-s... People love Amazon now, but I think it's time to fear it. They're already in bed with governments for multi-billion contracts, and are aiming for monopoly power. They won't behave well for much longer, and I'd argue they've already started behaving badly (raising prices on consumers, lowering commissions on affiliates, and so on).
- Cyph0n 9y agoThe acquisition of Souq was mainly a response to the announcement of Noon, a $1 billion Souq competitor out of KSA.
- HillaryBriss 9y ago> I think it's time to fear it. as a consumer, i agree. but so do a lot of companies. Run down the list of private sectors that spend the most on information technology -- health care, banking, retail, insurance -- and all of them worry Amazon is coming for them. https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-02-15/worried-about-amazon-companies-run-into-google-s-arms https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-02-15/worried...
- wpietri 9y agoAnd I'd add that a high price hurts Walmart more than Amazon. Amazon's market cap is 3x Walmart's. Amazon has $31 billion in cash and short-term investments; Walmart has about $7 billion. On top of this, presumably Walmart will be investing heavily in expansion. I think Walmart's stinginess is also an important point here. At this price, plus the additional money they put in, a good ROI gets harder. Bezos has never really cared about short-term ROI, but I wonder if Walmart will be inclined to be impatient or under-invest later because of the high price now.
- ENOTTY 9y ago"Google-parent Alphabet Inc. is likely to participate in the investment with Walmart, said one of the people" Walmart is getting help.
- skinnymuch 9y agoIs anyone besides Google contributing. I think I read Google is giving $3B so that’s a decent chunk. I’m guessing they wanted Softbank out for control in general and since Softbank loves to control, otherwise they could’ve saved another $4B and let Softbank keep 20% control.
- guilt 9y agoThat's so wrong. Way back in 2012 Amazon already threw a raw deal at Flipkart and they haven't really spoken to each other since. Also, Amazon have tried to crush Flipkart by essentially dumping their money into long term growth in India and Flipkart survived through it. The Flipkart board would rather side with Walmart than Amazon, even if Amazon matched Walmart's offer. Walmart has ties with manufacturing in India. On the other hand, Amazon and Flipkart run a marketplace (mostly) in India. Pretty sure Flipkart would have seen this and has taken the right decision in siding with Walmart. Amazon's loss unless they can really do something about raw materials and manufacturing in India. That is the real deal now.
- aresant 9y agoFascinating that 1 - google is going to participate in the purchase. Clearly a defensive move v amazon. 2 - us companies will now own the 1 & 2 positions for ecommerce in India. Start difference w China and somewhat surprising given Indias excellent engineering and biz culture
- aurailious 9y agoUS companies are going to be aggressive to make sure India doesn't end up like China to them.
- deanCommie 9y ago2 - does it have one? It seems that there is a colossal brain drain, and the quality of the engineers staying in India is tremendously diluted by those that pursued engineering purely as a safe career choice
- actuator 9y agoThat seems like a gross overgeneralization. Yes, there is brain drain but it doesn't mean that the engineers working in Indian startups like Flipkart are the ones who pursued engineering as a safety net. A lot of them are as smart as their Indian counterparts who are working in US in companies like Amazon, Google etc.
- actuator 9y agoAre the downvotes because of the last line? I would love to prove this with a metric but can't just like the parent comment author. The opinion I stated is mostly from personal experience of knowing those people, working with them or having interviewed them.
- xkcdefgh 9y agoyc can be weird with downvotes sometimes.
- 9y ago
- bradhe 9y agoWhat if Walmart and Google actually teamed up? Google technology powering Walmart's supply chain? I wonder how competitive they'd end up actually being vs Amazon.
- asperous 9y agoFrom what I understand Walmart's supply chain technology is already pretty competitive: https://www.tradegecko.com/blog/incredibly-successful-supply-chain-management-walmart https://www.tradegecko.com/blog/incredibly-successful-supply...
- emeerson 9y agoIt would take Googlmart 5+ years to play catch up if not longer. Google's too disorganized and they don't have any supply chain tech built up. Amazon has years of supply chain infrastructure (both software, physical systems and organization) including supply/demand forecasting models and warehouse operational investment (Kiva systems, etc...). The only differentiation that Google adds to Walmart is: - Top-talent engineering resources & brand which attracts talent to work on these problems - Layers of developer tooling and services that remove the "systems at scale" development curve of startups and smaller companies. Now if Alibaba teamed up with Walmart... (read: acquired).
- throwaway6498 9y agoIn Bangalore, companies like Google, Amazon, Walmart Labs, Flipkart, Directi, and LinkedIn all attract the same talent pool. All of these companies can pay either as much as Google or more than Google to attract the topmost talent pool. In fact, many of the engineers in these companies frequently hop from one company to another between these. Of these, Amazon has the highest attrition rate due to stressful working conditions and they are sooner to leave to another company than the others. Walmart Labs in Bangalore has a talent pool that is running a million node cluster based on OpenStack completely in house with zero dependency on something like AWS (of course!) or GCP. That's quite a feat and I think it will help Flipkart a great deal if Walmart Labs shares some of this incredible talent and resources they have built within their company. Disclaimer: I work for Flipkart.
- bhouston 9y agoFlipkart is losing to Amazon.in right now. I think that Softbank is smartly offloading a possible loser to Walmart/Google here at close to peak valuation. Maybe Google/Walmart can turn it around though. https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/flipkart.com https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/flipkart.com https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/amazon.in https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/amazon.in
- anilshanbhag 9y agoThis the wrong metric to look at. If you look at number of app reviews per week on Appannie, Flipkart averages roughly twice the number of reviews as Amazon with better average rating (4.6 vs 3.9). ~85% of India only accesses internet via mobile.
- kingbirdy 9y agoThat just means flipkart is better at driving reviews, potentially with some bonus for doing so
- actuator 9y agoYeah, a lot of apps do this by being persistent. Though it doesn't explain the low rating.
- dopamean 9y agoI know very little about which metrics to look at but this seems like an even more wrong metric to go by. What does number of app reviews prove other than that the app is good at pushing people to review it?
- anilshanbhag 9y agoBoth apps don't urge users to go review their app on the play store. On this assumption, since both serve similar demographic of users - the average number of reviews written per week has to have a strong correlation to number of new users.
- tinyhouse 9y agoThe title says Walmart beats Amazon in a battle. Then in the article it says: "Flipkart’s board ultimately decided a deal with Walmart is more likely to win regulatory approval because Amazon is the No. 2 e-commerce operator in India behind Flipkart and its primary competitor. Amazon is out of the running unless Walmart hits unforeseen trouble." Doesn't sound like a battle to me.
- vpribish 9y agoThe more I read from Bloomberg the less I respect them.
- GW150914 9y agoIt’s incredible that they think this kind of steaming “content” is worth $40 a month!
- eight_ender 9y agoI think it was a battle in the sense of "Amazon made Walmart pay a shitload and the Flipkart founders wanted the safest possible route to close because holy shit dat money"
- freehunter 9y agoIt was a battle because Amazon went to the table to negotiate knowing they would not win. Their entire reason for entering the negotiations was to drive up the price for Walmart. You don't have to win every battle to win the war.
- enitihas 9y agoThis will make sure the india e-commerce landscape remains competitive. Otherwise Flipkart would have run out of cash to bleed soon. As far as I know, both Flipkart and Amazon had been spending huge amount of money. I think this is very clever of Walmart, as they can make sure Amazon India keeps fighting for some time.
- wlabs 9y agoWalmart has an awesome research and development labs known as Walmart Labs in Bangalore. Flipkart has its development headquarters in Bangalore too. They have awesome engineers too. Both Walmart Labs and Flipkart hire the best computer scientists and software engineering talent from across the country. They pay as much as and sometimes more than what Google Bangalore pays its engineers. With Walmart now acquiring a majority stake in Flipkart, I can see the two strong and highly skilled engineering centers coming together and forming a formidable team to give a tough competition to Amazon.
- elvirs 9y agoshow me one good thing that came from Walmart Labs.
- jethro_tell 9y agoTheir wikipedia shows: Kosmix is a search engine that allows users to perform advanced searches via multiple filters. MeeHive delivers news to your iPhone and iPod touch that reflects your interests. But for a service so focused on the reader's interests Right health which is a health focused kosmix? TweetBeat - a twitter client with filtering? I mean, not exactly xerox/PARC
- tspike 9y agoHere's two: hapiJS and lacinia
- devposter 9y agoFor those wondering what these projects are, here are the direct URLs to their project pages: - https://hapijs.com/ https://hapijs.com/ - http://lacinia.readthedocs.io/ http://lacinia.readthedocs.io/ Here are a couple of other interesting Walmart Labs projects I came across: - https://www.electrode.io/ https://www.electrode.io/ - https://github.com/walmartlabs/thorax https://github.com/walmartlabs/thorax - http://oneops.com/ http://oneops.com/
- blreng 9y ago
- sandGorgon 9y agoIndia is now poised to be the only country in the world with a two way fight between Amazon and Alibaba. Three way if you consider Walmart.
- mars4rp 9y agoThis is crazy! As we all know, online retailers are killing local businesses, in US it might make sense because the profit goes to another sector of economy, Amazon is going to hire more developers and invest in other products that in long run might not be total lose for the whole economy! what a country like India is going to gain by letting American and Chinese companies destroy her local businesses and take the profit to the mainland! Is this the new colonization?
- actuator 9y agoNot colonization but this is what happens when most Indian businesses won't be willing to burn huge amount of money to get growth initially. That lack of funding environment is a good opportunity for cash rich foreign investors who have an appetite for that kind of growth. I can only think of one recent IPO in India from tech space which did well, Infibeam[0]. But then again they had a good business model which didn't require burning a lot of money. 0. https://www.valueresearchonline.com/stocks/snapshot.asp?code=23319 https://www.valueresearchonline.com/stocks/snapshot.asp?code...
- mars4rp 9y agoOf course an Indian startup can't compete with Amazon and Walmart! But they can easily ban foreign companies and let it grow organically in the country, they might get it 5 years later but they are not bankrupting all of their local business with no upside for the economy!
- actuator 9y agoIf they had to go down this path, they should have done it years ago. I don't know enough about economics to comment whether that have been good or bad though. Before opening up in 90s, Indian economy was closed as well but that didn't necessarily led to Indian enterprises in those spaces being very competitive once they lost all those protections.
- desireco42 9y agoIt is all fun and games until AliBaba joins the game ;)
- actuator 9y agoAlready there. PayTM Mall
- balladeer 9y agoTheir interface is a stuff of nightmares even for non tech savvy users. Their pricing doesn't boost confidence either which is very crucial in a market like ours. So I think we will have to wait and watch when it really becomes visible and starts making a difference.
- yalogin 9y agoI thought Amazon was beating Flipkart, coupled with the Prime membership Flipkart would lose out eventually. Not sure Walmart is making the right investment here.
- robertAngst 9y agoGood? Amazon needs some more major competition.
- slackstation 9y agoI may be completely ignorant but, is it weird that the biggest retailer in India has an English name?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tspike 9y agoThere are more speakers of Hindi than English in India, but they are geographically skewed toward the north of the country. Some regions (esp Tamil Nadu) are actively antagonistic toward Hindi. English is a good bet to be able to communicate across the entire country, and is also an official language.
- tamizhar 9y ago> Some regions (esp Tamil Nadu) are actively antagonistic toward Hindi. People of any region tend to be antagonistic towards crude attempts to force a foreign language and culture upon them. Hindi has no common ancestry with South Indian languages like Tamil. In fact, Hindi-Urdu-Farsi is from the same language family as English. Therefore, Hindi is just as foreign as English to South India and therefore it makes much more sense for South Indians to speak their native tongues and a useful foreign language like English or perhaps Mandarin in the future rather than be forced to learn Hindi.
- abhi3 9y agoIndia has 22 official languages & English is the lingua-fraca.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_with_official_status_in_India#Eighth_Schedule_to_the_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_with_official_status...) Almost everyone middle-class and up can atleast read English so makes sense that online retailers use that.
- blreng 9y agoIn the southern parts of the country (Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu), I have seen even the poorer class, auto-drivers, and cab-drivers too speak English fluently. :-)
- joering2 9y agoLook at it from other angle: Amazon just made Walmart spent 15B, while imagine what Amazon can do with so much cash, considering their past performance. Is there anything they (as a company) failed ?
- adventured 9y agoAmazon has failed at a lot of things. Amazon search, A9, was originally meant to take on Google back in 2003 as a comprehensive search solution. It failed spectacularly at that. The Amazon phone, a shot at Apple's massive profits. A total failure. Amazon attempted to take on eBay in auctions, they failed. Amazon attempted to take on Craigslist in classified ads, another failure. Amazon has been attempting to figure out a way to dominate the music category for 15+ years, they've repeatedly failed. They're very far behind Apple and Spotify when it comes to stand-alone music services. Amazon's local daily deals service, Amazon Local, failed (shut-down in 2015). They also burned $175m on LivingSocial during the Groupon mania years as part of that overall sector effort. They attempted a competing mapping service to Google Maps, that ended up being a mediocre product (with a few technical innovations) that nobody used. They quickly discovered how difficult and expensive it is to build a competing product to Google Maps. Amazon failed with travel, attempting to go after Priceline's profits, they shut down Amazon Destinations in 2015. They failed with Local Register, which was some kind of mediocre shot at Square's market. Amazon essentially takes shots at anything that pops up and demonstrates an ability to make money. They fail overwhelmingly, and then very rarely they get a homerun like AWS which pays for it all many times over.
- nocoder 9y agoI have worked with e-commerce related companies so I can offer some perspective here. The battle in india is far from settled, it is important to look category wise. Moreover in context e-commerce one should not ignore alibaba backed paytm which seems to be working on a super app strategy and big basket which is into grocery. Website visits- Amazon seems to be ahead. From Jeff's shareholder letter - "Amazon.in is the fastest growing marketplace in India, and the most visited site on both desktop and mobile, according to comScore and SimilarWeb. The Amazon.in mobile shopping app was also the most downloaded shopping app in India in 2017, according to App Annie. " This does not include numbers for Flipkart owned myntra I think adding that might take Flipkart ahead since myntra is the biggest in fashion. Moreover play store might not give a complete picture since many devices come pre-installed with apps in India, my phone had Amazon app pre-installed which will not count towards play store download. Mobiles - This currently the biggest category in e-commerce. Accounting for 60-70% of sales. Here they are neck to neck but it is hard to make out clearly since e-commerce is heavily driven by exclusives and brands like Lenovo and Xiaomi are playing them against each other. Fashion - Myntra owned by Flipkart is ahead here. Amazon is catching up but is challenging to match a vertical player in user experience. Electronics - I don't think there is a clear leader here. Due to logistical challenges for major brands it is still convenient to buy offline apart from some sales period when discounts can be really high in e-commerce. Of late though lot of offline stores are ready to match the ecom players, I saw this while buying TV plus they had faster delivery and installation. This might play out like mobiles with lot of Chinese brands who don't have offline networks competing on pricing and using e-commerce for distribution. Grocery - Amazon has a lead over Flipkart. It has multiple plays like Amazon now, Pantry etc. Flipkart is piloting a model similar to now in bangalore. The competition comes here from alibaba backed big basket which also has perishables and in my personal experience provides better service vs Amazon. Walmart might give a boost to flipkart here with its expertise in grocery. However unit economics are worst in this category. High weight low average selling price means shipping cost eat up a lot of revenue. Video - Amazon has more users than Netflix. The challengers here are Jio with it huge base, cheap data and good library and hotstar with its biggest strength being Indian TV shows and live cricket and football. This is extremely nascent in India so every network has their own app but these two + Netflix seem the most likely to be around for long. Netflixs pricing in India is pretty high so will be mostly used by the affluent sections and not mass. This deal was unusually public. I think Amazon was never seriously into it. The valuation is insane plus Amazon would have run into some antitrust issue plus this being an election year in India, government might act tough against such acquisition. The good thing with Walmart is that there might be more sanity in the market since it is a listed company and can't just burn VC money.
- allpratik 9y agoThis deal is the result of commonly shared desperation. Both companies in the news Flipkart and Walmart are desperate to fight back Amazon's increasing market leadership and their spread. Amazon is growing crazy in India, literally. But there's more to this. It's actually Walmart who is pushing this deal aggressively as they see it as a chance to tap into the increasingly growing Indian market. In past few years, Walmart did try numerous times to set up their shop here but due to certain FDI regulations they simply couldn't get in. Moreover, it is learned that Walmart (once the deal goes through) will be increasingly looking to expand Flipkart's nascent grocery related business. They want to overhaul the farm-to-customer supply chain and hence current stage of Flipkart and their logistics wing could be a real boon for Walmart. Walmart does have few retail stores in India but they are in JV with a telecom company owner Sunil Bharti Mittal. On the other side, Flipkart badly needs capital infusion as they are bleeding or burning money at a crazy rate. Whatever edge they had currently in India over Amazon is due to Myntra's apparel sales. Flipkart, technologically speaking is lagging behind Amazon. And this is a real pain which almost all online retailers are facing. The same thing happened with another e-comm company SnapDeal (Also backed by Softbank). One thing is for sure, to capture the Indian market and dominate it, either of these companies had to adapt quickly to cater to tier 2 and 3 cities of India. Whoever rules these cities and improve on last mile delivery experiences in these cities will rule Indian e-comm.
- RandomCSGeek 9y ago> This deal is the result of commonly shared desperation. I get that Walmart is desperate to get into Indian market, but what's the issue with Flipkart. Even though they aren't doing as well as compared to Amazon, from the founder's pov, why would he care if the company goes to Walmart or amazon? After all, he gets the money, and he gets to make a exit(from what I've heard)
- throwaway6498 9y agoI work for Flipkart and I am quite happy that it's Walmart who we are going to work with instead of Amazon. As an engineer, Walmart Labs (their research division in Bangalore) is a much better fit to Flipkart's culture than Amazon. The engineering talent pool in Walmart Labs and Flipkart are quite similar. In Bangalore, there are a handful of companies like Google, Amazon, Walmart Labs, Flipkart, and LinkedIn who can really pay the big bucks necessary to hire the topmost talent from India. Among these, Google has a laid back culture and does not really excel in retail. Amazon has a stressful culture and I know plenty of people who could not take the stress and long hours of working in Amazon beyond a year and moved to one of the other four companies. Walmart Labs, on the other hand, is quite similar to us. I think there will be a good exchange of ideas and skills between the two companies. By the way, since a lot of people are commenting here that Amazon is killing it and they are number 1. That's true. But that's not a very relevant metric. For the owners and employees of a company like Flipkart, it is not all about being number 1. It is more about being able to make substantial profit and pay the employees well enough to keep competing with the likes of Google, Amazon, and Walmart Labs in order to hire the topmost talent. Granted Flipkart is not doing very well in making good profits right now but we are trying to make the areas where Amazon is weak at as our strengths. For example, Amazon at this time does not ship large products (things that are bigger than what you can hold in a hand) to small towns and villages. We are trying to excel in that and it has helped us survive so far. With us becoming teams with Walmart Labs, I am hoping we will do even better.
- nonamechicken 9y agoRegarding the last para, my experience had been the opposite. Whenever I enter my pincode in Flipkart, it would say we don't deliver to your area (which is a small town). Amazon and eBay didn't have any issues. All the items I tried to buy were no bigger than a home router. I contacted Flipkart 2-3 times about it over the last 3+ years. They just gave a generic response that we are trying to expand or something.
- throwaway6498 9y agoWhat you are reporting is correct and I can understand a customer's frustration due to it. But what you are saying is not the opposite of what I am saying. You are saying: Flipkart is weak at delivering small items to small towns. I agree with this. I am saying: Flipkart is strong at delivering large items to small towns and Amazon is weak at that. Do you have examples where Flipkart did not deliver a large item (certainly much larger than your home router) such as a fridge or table to your small town? That would be an interesting example that would contradict what I am saying.
- brainless 9y agoHere is an avid Indian online buyer's point of view on this: Flipkart was the favorite child of online commerce and had dominated the space in India in the first 5/6 years. I have been an active customer. They did bring on large deals, like Motorola Moto G and Xiaomi Mi phones launching exclusively in India through them. But as with our modern connected world, competition is global. Amazon is a huge brand. Even in India the software developer world literally bets on AWS. Yes brand presence is a thing in marketing/sales psychology. Amazon started offerening faster deliveries and that I what, I think I remember, made me to switch initially. Early days of Amazon in India were fairly low profile. The product catalog was poor. But if you keep a tab on global brands, you know Amazon is pretty much a predator in supply chain management. So they slowly built up their infrastructure. I still remember having debates a few years ago about which e-commerce player delivers to more PIN codes in India. Flipkart was still a winner a few years back, but that is now history. I think Flipkart lost focus somewhere, got busy with I do not know what. Their deliveries did not get better. Amazon is a 900 pound Gorilla and very silently played their cards, got customer attention and sales. I easily remember how many Flipkart delivery boxes I used to see on the roads daily, which are now more in the Amazon brand these days. Oh and one other thing: English is very common in India, at least in the urban consumer - so that makes us very aware of the US companies like Amazon (even Walmart) and when they enter India we do want to give them a try.
- thisisit 9y agoI don't know whether I should be sad or happy with this news. Flipkart has been the face of the Indian startup scene. So, it is sad to see it end like this. But on the other hand they had tons of strategy related snafus like going mobile-only for sometime etc. So, this seems like a good thing to happen, at least Flipkart can't run out of money with Walmart behind it.
- deafcalculus 9y agoFlipkart made a huge mistake by trying to go mobile-only a while ago and is now mostly a smartphone shop. Hardly anyone I know buys anything other than smartphones (often Flipkart-exclusive) from them. Amazon now has a bigger catalog and better prices too. Walmart could come along and directly compete in the market by themselves. Wonder why this acquisition is needed at all. There's hardly anything defensible in Flipkart's assets, and this acquisition isn't at a deep discount.
- devposter 9y agoI don't think Walmart is allowed to compete directly in India due to FDI regulations.
- billfruit 9y agoI think antitrust regulations are a bit lax in India, to the extent that Amazon would even consider a bid for Flipkart, and the regulators and the government not opening their mouths about it.
- wtmt 9y agoI think of this as one last gasp for Flipkart. After Amazon entered the Indian market and provided not only lower prices in many cases but also quick delivery and decent enough customer care. Whenever I compared Flipkart, Amazon and Paytm on price for certain products in the last few years, I've found Paytm to be the cheapest (after cash back), followed by Amazon and lastly by Flipkart. Amazon has caught up a bit on pricing while Paytm has realized that offering a lot of discounts and making losses is not that good of a business model. India is a highly price sensitive market with almost no loyalty when it comes to online purchases where price comparison is quick(er) to do. Amazon has a lot of money to tire out its competitors to death. While I don't like Amazon for a few different reasons, the writing was on the wall for quite sometime as far as Flipkart was concerned. I'd guess many people would be leaving Flipkart in the next one year and either working for the competition or start a new company to compete with it.
- xkcdefgh 9y agoMany here may not be aware of this but the tech landacape is quite different in India. Walmart actually has a major development center in Bangalore which attracts a lot of the top talent. No sane engineer in India who gets a job at any of Amazon,Flipkart,Walmart labs would even think of joining google india, a glorified testing centre
- known 9y agoI think alibaba acquiring paytm and walmart acquiring flipkart is a wrong strategy; Both are loss making companies; "A woman will buy anything she thinks the store is losing money on" --Kin Hubbard
- john58 9y agoIndian e-commerce growth rate looks interesting https://news.alphastreet.com/walmart-buys-flipkart/ https://news.alphastreet.com/walmart-buys-flipkart/