Walmart’s second big bet on Flipkart
Working together finally, Walmart and Flipkart may have the key to unlock the massive wholesale grocery market.
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Editor's note: When Walmart Inc. acquired Flipkart in 2018, it paid 5x of what it paid for an upstart e-commerce player, Jet.com, in the US to compete against its bitter rival, Amazon.com Inc. While Jet was shut down last year, Flipkart has gone in the opposite direction by acquiring its parent’s wholesale business in India. Both Walmart’s India operations and Flipkart’s founding year coincided in 2007 and now over a decade later, it seems Walmart has firmly put its India bet—both retail and wholesale—into a consolidated e-commerce play. The move is significant for two reasons. First, Walmart India's wholesale business is estimated to be in the ballpark of Rs 7,000 crore; the company is the second-largest wholesale cash and carry player in the country by revenue, with Metro Cash & Carry (the Indian subsidiary of German company Metro AG) in first place. Second, Flipkart has little to show in the grocery retail category that Walmart’s wholesale business thrives on (it accounts for around two-thirds of its revenues in India). It is worth reminding again that for all the bluster of e-commerce, including …
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