Flipkart Store – All you need to know

Karan Khatri

Now a days there is a boom in e-commerce in India. There has been many e-commerce sites like Amazon.in, Flipkart.com and Snapdeal.com. Today we are going to know much more in detail about the Filpkart store.

Introduction

• Flipkart went live in 2007 with the objective of making books easily available to anyone who had internet access. It operates exclusively in India, where it is headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka, though Flipkart is actually registered and based in Singapore.
• They’re present across various categories including movies, music, games, mobiles, cameras, computers, healthcare and personal products, home appliances and electronics – and still counting!
• With over 11.5 million book titles, 11 different categories, more than 2 million registered users and sale of 30000 items a day, they’re one of the leading e-commerce players in the country.
• Their success is largely due to their obsession with providing customers a memorable online shopping experience. Be it Cash on Delivery, a 30-day replacement policy, EMI options, free shipping – and of course the great prices that they offer.
• Then there’s dedicated Flipkart delivery team that works round the clock to personally make sure packages reach on time.
• For now they’re present in 27 lucky cities, but don’t worry, plans are underway to spread to many others.

Founders

1. Sachin Bansal

• CEO and Co-founder
• Sachin spent his early years in Chandigarh. He graduated from IIT-Delhi with a degree in Computer Engineering. In 2006 he joined Amazon.com in India which he later left to set-up Flipkart.
• As CEO, Sachin oversees all the customer facing activities of the company ranging from technology to marketing. He is also in charge of Flipkart’s corporate divisions which include the finance and legal departments.
• An avid gaming enthusiast, Sachin likes to spend most of his free time with his family.

2. Binny Bansal

• COO and Co-founder
• Born and raised in Chandigarh, Binny went on to get a degree in Computer Engineering from IIT Delhi. He had a brief stint at Amazon before taking the entrepreneurial plunge with Flipkart.
• At Flipkart, Binny oversees all operational activities that come into play from the time the customer places an order till the time of delivery. This spans across divisions like warehousing, logistics and customer support.
• A big fan of Salman Rushdie as well as Stieg Larsson’s ‘Millennium’ series, Binny is also passionate about soccer and NBA. An active sportsman, he used to captain his school basketball and soccer teams.

Flipkart Story

• Flipkart,was established by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal both are alumni of Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and worked for Amazon.com before quitting and founding their own company.
• Initially they used word of mouth to popularise their company. Within two years through word of mouth of their services, Flipkart became one of the top 100 Indian sites and was credited for being India’s largest online bookseller with over 10 million titles on offer.
• Flipkart broke even in March 2010 and claims to have had at least 100% growth every quarter since its founding.
• Flipkart employs over 3000 people.
• Also it had experienced 2 million unit sales and 4 million unique vistors per month with sales growing at 25% per month, eyeing a $50 million run rate as reported by TechCrunch.
• It’s been about a year since Flipkart started moving from being a pure bookstore to selling mobiles/DVDs etc. Since then, Flipkart went for a major brand makeover, making it look more ‘upmarket’.
• There has been large newspaper ads, TVCs and a lot of web ads.

Funding’s

• Legally, Flipkart is not an Indian company, since it is based in Singapore, and majority of its shareholders and investors are foreigners. In May 2014, Flipkart received $210 million from DST Global and in July it raised $1 billion led by existing investors Tiger Global and South Africa’s media group Naspers.
• Initially, the founders had spent 400,000 only for making website to set up the business.
• Flipkart has later raised funding from venture capital funds Accel India (US$1 million in 2009) and Tiger Global (US$10 million in 2010 and US$20 million in June 2011).
• In July 2013, Flipkart raised USD 160 million from private equity investors.
• In December 2014, After it received $700 million from another funding, Flipkart had a market cap of $11 billion or Rs.66000 crore.
• On 20th December, 2014, Flipkart announced filing application with Singapore based companies’ regulator ACRA to become a public company after raising USD 700 million for long term strategic investments in India following which its number of investors exceeded 50.

Acquisitions

• 2010: WeRead, a social book discovery tool.
• 2011: Mime360, a digital content platform company.
• 2011: Chakpak.com, a Bollywood news site that offers updates, news, photos and videos. Flipkart acquired the rights to Chakpak’s digital catalogue which includes 40,000 filmographies, 10,000 movies and close to 50,000 ratings. Flipkart has categorically said that it will not be involved with the original site and will not use the brand name.
• 2012: Letsbuy.com, an Indian e-retailer in electronics. Flipkart has bought the company for an estimated US$25 million.com was closed down and all traffic to Letsbuy has been diverted to Flipkart.
• 2014: Acquired Myntra.com in an estimated INR 2,000 crore deal.

Awards and recognition

• Co-Founder of Flipkart Sachin Bansal, got Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2012-2013 from Economic Times, leading Indian Economic Daily
• com was awarded Young Turk of the Year at CNBC TV 18’s ‘India Business Leader Awards 2012′ (IBLA).
• com- got Nominated for IndiaMART Leaders of Tomorrow Awards 2011.

So this was Flipkart.com , we will learn more about how flipkart works, taxation on flipkart, Questions like why flipkart is registered in Singapore and many more which we need to know.

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