Flipkart must not squander its latest funding on discounts

It needs to reduce its burn rate

Flipkart, the homegrown e-retail major, has raised $1.4 billion from Tencent Holdings, eBay and Microsoft in its single-largest round of funding so far. This comes almost two years after it had mobilised $2.4 billion in three rounds, ending in July 2015. At its peak, Flipkart was valued at $15 billion. But, after it came to light that the Indian e-retail opportunity was not as big as initially expected and that Flipkart was still a long distance away from profitability, investors had started to mark down their investments. The most dramatic of the write-downs came when Morgan Stanley revalued Flipkart at