Story of Flipkart, the big billion e-commerce startup

Team Udayavani, Jun 13, 2021, 3:38 PM IST

Flipkart was founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007. The two became friends while working together at Amazon.

Flipkart started from a two-bedroom apartment in Bengaluru’s Koramangala area as an online bookstore and from there they went on to become the country’s largest e-commerce player.

Flipkart initially started selling a variety of other products like music, mobile phones, as well as movies.

Flipkart expanded at a rapid pace steadily supplementing various new item categories in its collection as e-commerce gradually started growing in the world of retail.

Currently, Flipkart facilitates over 80 million+ products across the rage of over 80 categories from mobile phones & accessories, computers, laptops, books and e-books, home appliances, electronic goods, clothes and accessories, sports and fitness, baby care, games and toys, jewelry, footwear, and etc.

The company bought online apparel retailer Myntra at about $300 million in 2014, and another fashion retailer Jabong for $70 million in 2016. In 2016 itself it bought payment startup PhonePe in 2016.

One of the principal USP of  Flipkart is its pricing and the platform is known for offering branded products at economical prices. Additional benefits include, cash on delivery (COD) feature, its refund policy as well as its customer service.

In 2018, Flipkart was acquired by Walmart with a 77% share of the platform now possessed by the US retail giant.

Flipkart currently has 300 million registered customer base and 150+ million app downloads.

In 2020, Flipkart launched Voice Assistant, Flipkart Wholesale Business, Flipkart Leap Incubator and Flipkart Quick.

Although Flipkart did have a great start and went on to become one of the leading e-commerce websites, it is presently struggling as there are a lot of competitors like Amazon.