Flipkart does not aspire to play a role in global markets: Binny Bansal

Even though it now has the backing of global retail giant Walmart, home-grown e-commerce major Flipkart says it does not aspire to play a role in global markets. It would instead continue to bet on India, where opportunities are immense.

In a fireside chat with Sudhir Sethi, founder and chairman of IDG Ventures India, on Tuesday evening, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal said that e-commerce and retail were very local businesses and it was difficult to take the model and apply outside. Calling India a land of opportunities, Bansal said the country was the last big market and there were no such markets to take the model into. 

“There are too many opportunities in India to build around e-commerce, such as financial services. We want to do more around Indian customers rather than stretch ourselves to markets where competition might be more,” Bansal added. 

Opening up about the US retail giant Walmart’s deal with Flipkart, Bansal said since it was not a full acquisition, the deal went quite smoothly.
 

“Yes, more than 50 per cent of the company is owned by Walmart, but there’s zero change in personnel and teams and the functioning of Flipkart. It continues to be the same company with the same ethos. It was a complex deal to construct but emotions became easier to manage because most of what we stand for was not really changing,” he explained.

Walmart earlier this year completed its acquisition of a 77 per cent stake in Flipkart for $16 billion. After this, Walmart said Flipkart’s existing management team under CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy would continue to lead the business. Existing investors Tiger Global and Tencent Holdings would also remain on the Flipkart board.

Bansal said Flipkart’s acquisition of e-commerce companies like Myntra and Jabong and payments platform PhonePe really played out well because these were also strategic deals where the ethos of the companies remained unchanged and they were allowed to keep their respective entrepreneurial ecosystems intact.

Speaking of the intense competition in the e-commerce space in India, Bansal said Flipkart would continue its own journey and learn from competitors while betting big on two new spaces — grocery and furniture. Until now, the company’s strongest categories were fashion, electronics and mobile phones.