Google has invested around $350 million in Flipkart, becoming the latest high-profile company to back the Walmart-owned Indian e-commerce startup.
The Bengaluru-based startup said in a brief statement on Friday that the Android maker will also provide cloud services to Flipkart as part of the deal. The Google investment is part of a roughly $1 billion funding round that Flipkart is looking to launch in 2023. The round was led by Walmart, which invested $600 million late last year. (Microsoft is also an investor in Flipkart.)
Valued at $36 billion with the new investment, Flipkart leads India's e-commerce market, serving hundreds of millions of consumers in India's smaller cities and towns. The startup, which also owns fashion e-commerce startup Myntra, controls about 48% of India's e-commerce market, according to Bernstein.
Flipkart competes with Reliance Retail, Amazon, SoftBank-backed Meesho and a growing number of quick-commerce apps. Reliance Retail, run by Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani, runs India's largest retail chain and is increasingly focusing on building an e-commerce business. Reliance Retail was valued at $100 billion last year after about $2 billion in investments from QIA, ADIA and KKR.
According to Bernstein, India's e-commerce market is expected to reach a value of $133 billion by next year.
“Indian e-commerce is seeing the emergence of challengers in the quick commerce, social commerce and vertical commerce categories. Amazon and Flipkart continue to maintain their leadership position, driven by their strengths in mobile, consumer electronics and home appliances. However, unlike the large horizontal winners in the global e-commerce market, India is likely to see category winners emerge as they scale, such as Blinkit (quick commerce), Meesho (tier 2+ market) and Nykaa (vertical commerce),” Bernstein analysts wrote in a recent note.
Google, which serves more than 500 million people in India, sees the South Asian nation as a key overseas market. The company announced plans to invest $10 billion in Indian companies in 2020. (It has since invested $4.5 billion in telecommunications operator Jio Platforms and another $1 billion in Airtel.)