E-commerce major Flipkart has secured a fresh round of funding $200 million from existing investors Naspers, Accel Partners, Tiger Global and ICONIQ Capital. The deal values Flipkart at $1.5 billion, or over Rs 9,000 crore. The company plans to use the funds to improve its tech platform which powers its marketplace, e-book business and payment solutions, strengthen its supply chain and for hiring. The firm claims 9.6 million registered users, 1 million unique monthly daily visitors and more than $500 million in gross merchandise value. It hopes to cross $1 billion mark by 2015.
This is Flipkart’s fifth round of funding, after raising a reported $150 million in August 2012, $20 million in June 2011, $10 million in June 2010 and $1 million in 2009. Naspers had invested 858 million rand (around $102.1 million) in Flipkart in return for 10% stake in the company in August 2012. Flipkart had sold its front end retail operations WS Retail to a group of investors led by former OnMobile COO Rajiv Kuchhal in February 2013 and had adopted Amazon-like hybrid marketplace model in April 2013. It has also applied for a semi-closed prepaid wallet license.
Source: Economic Times, MediaNama
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