Flipkart, the country’s leading e-commerce company, has now entered retail as well as wholesale business. On Thursday, the company made an announcement of launching, a new digital market ‘Flipkart Wholesale’, thus making its entry in the country’s $ 650 billion wholesale business market. The company will now control the operations of the Best Price by making a purchase of 100% of Walmart India Private Limited. Walmart India has been operating its wholesale shops under its name as ‘Best Price’ in the country. Currently, it owns total of 28 stores across the country.
All the Walmart Investors invested approximately $ 1.2 billion. This announcement by Flipkart, came at the time after the company recently, raised around $ 1.2 billion from a Walmart-led group of investors. Although, the actual value of this acquisition deal had not been disclosed by Flipkart till now.
The company mentioned in its statement that ‘Flipkart Wholesale‘ would be a B2B (inter-business between companies) digital market. Flipkart will begin its operations from the August month. The company also stated that its main focus would be sustaining the lives of the country’s retail market as well as meeting the requirements and needs of small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The company also said that this move will provide the small business sector the opportunity of choosing from a wide range of products at reasonable prices.
Adarsh Menon will be holding the leadership Flipkart Wholesale. Adarsh Menon is a senior employee of the company. At the same time, Samir Aggarwal, current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Walmart India will continue to hold his post till the acquisition is completed. After that, he will be given some other responsibility at Walmart itself. At the same time, around 3,500 other employees of Walmart India will join Flipkart.
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Walmart bought Flipkart in 2018
Significantly, Walmart India, one of the largest retail trading companies in the world, is a wholly owned company of Walmart. Walmart invested $ 16 billion in 2018 to buy 77 percent of stake in Flipkart.
Be it groceries or apparel, all these products will now be available at one place and this, this will give customers an opportunity to choose from a wide variety of products with attractive plans and incentives. Also, these goods will be supplied to customers through a reliable network which will increase margins.
Walmart India’s ‘Best Price’ had now added around 1.5 million people, this is inclusive of grocery and other MSMEs. Major Indian brands, local manufacturers and vendors have partnered with Flipkart Wholesale in order to make more products available for grocery and MSMEs.
Flipkart’s CEO, Kalyan Krishnamurthy said that the acquisition of Walmart India would benefit Flipkart from their deep understanding and employee experience in the wholesale business. This will strengthen our position to meet the needs of grocery and MSMEs.