Flipkart enters strategic alliance with Google Cloud to improve innovation

Google Cloud and e-commerce firm Flipkart, have entered into a multi-year strategic partnership to help fast-track Flipkart’s innovation and cloud strategy. The partnership will propel Flipkart into its next phase of growth and advance its vision of onboarding India’s next 200 million shoppers and lakhs of sellers. The companies didn’t reveal the value of this deal.

"Our strategic alliance with Google Cloud will enable us to accelerate our digital transformation, power productivity and advance our innovation agenda,” said Jeyandran Venugopal, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Flipkart. “We are excited by Google Cloud’s unique strengths and experience in AI/ML and its proven scalability and security, all of which will be critical in our next phase of growth.”

By leveraging Google Cloud’s secure and scalable global infrastructure and advanced networking technologies, Flipkart will be able to deliver robust app access and performance even during peak purchase seasons with heightened traffic. Flipkart will also continue to advance the pace of new product development by building on Google Cloud, furthering its expansion into Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets in India.

“Flipkart’s growth in India has been powered by its digital-first strategy and forward-thinking approach to cloud technology,” said Bikram Singh Bedi, Managing Director,  Google Cloud India. “As the company continues to scale and grow its e-commerce platform, we will work together to drive technological innovations and help Flipkart drive breakthrough businesses in the future.”

Flipkart will make its data platform more efficient by deploying Google Cloud’s advanced data analytics and machine learning technologies. This will enable the company to better analyze traffic and transactional data, unlock rich real-time insights into customer purchasing and shopping behaviour. This would also help identify trends and patterns with increased demand and create more personalized recommendations to enrich customer experience.

As a long time Google Workspace customer, Flipkart will expand its use of the flexible, innovative solution across its rapidly growing workforce to create innovative human-centred employee experiences and deepen connections in this new hybrid work environment.

Flipkart has been using Google suite services, but this is the first time the e-commerce firm has entered into a strategic alliance with Google Cloud to advance innovation.  

In 2017, Flipkart and Microsoft forged cloud partnership to expand e-commerce in India. As a first step in the broad collaboration between the two companies, Flipkart had adopted Microsoft Azure as its exclusive public cloud platform. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal had made the announcement at an event in Bengaluru.

Starting with computing infrastructure, the partnership included Microsoft Azure adding a layer of advanced cloud technologies and analytics to Flipkart’s existing data centers. Microsoft had said that its strong presence in India, along with its global scale, allowed for continued growth and expansion, setting the stage for a long-term partnership. However, this partnership doesn't exist for Flipkart anymore, according to the sources.