Google is investing nearly $350 million in Flipkart, becoming the latest high-profile name to back the Walmart-owned Indian e-commerce startup. As part of the deal, the Android-maker will also provide the Bengaluru-headquartered startup with cloud offerings, Flipkart said in a brief statement Friday. The Google investment is part of a nearly $1 billion funding round that Flipkart kicked off in 2023.
Walmart has led the round, having invested $600 million in it late last year. Flipkart, valued at over $33 billion, leads the e-commerce market in India, where it serves hundreds of millions of consumers in smaller cities and towns. The startup, which also owns the fashion e-commerce startup Myntra, commands about 48% of the Indian e-commerce market, according to Bernstein.
It competes with Reliance Retail, Amazon, SoftBank-backed Meesho and increasingly a number of quick-commerce apps . Reliance Retail — run by Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani — operates the largest retail chain in India and is increasingly attempting to put together an e-commerce play . Reliance Retail was valued at $100 billion in a nearly $2 billion investment by QIA, ADIA and KKR last year.
Google, which reaches more than half a billion people in India, identifies the South Asian nation as a key overseas market. The company unveiled plans to invest $10 billion in Indian businesses in 2020. (It has since invested $4.
5 billion in the telecom operator Jio Platforms , and another $1 billion in Airtel .) Th.