Flipkart eyes Rs 4,500-crore turnover by FY 15

Flipkart Online Services, which runs the online book retailer Flipkart.Com, is eyeing an ambitious Rs 4,500-crore turnover by FY 15 on the back of increased penetration of broadband and the firm's massive expansion plans, a top company official said.

Bangalore-headquartered Flipkart, the country's largest online bookstore selling over two-lakh books annually, now plans to extend its product portfolio by launching music, mobiles, consumer electronics and games over the next few months.

"We aim to be a USD 1-billion (Rs 4,500-crore) company over the next 3-years. We are growing at a CAGR of 700 per cent in the last two-years and hope to maintain that. We expect revenue to grow multi-fold on the back of our major expansion plan," Flipkart's Founder and CEO, Sachin Bansal, said. Flipkart offers around 15-20 per cent discount on every book and hence its revenues are mainly volume-driven. It sells 1.5-lakh books a month and has over 6-million titles listed ranging across all genre of books.

The company, which was started with a personal finance of Rs 4-lakh in 2007, had clocked a turnover of Rs 25-crore in FY 10 and is expecting around Rs 75-crore this fiscal. However, it expects a six-fold jump in its revenues at Rs 450-crore by FY 12, Bansal said, adding "given the growth rate of 700 per cent YoY, the figures are not at all ambitious but achievable."

The company is looking at investing around Rs 30-crore in the coming fiscal mainly in scaling-up its warehousing capacity, IT, technology, back-end and infrastructure. "We will be investing around Rs 30-crore in FY 12. Most of the funds will be used to scale-up warehousing capacity, increasing product portfolio, technology, back-end and infrastructure," Bansal said, adding that the funds would partly come from internal accruals and venture capital firms.

The company has four warehouses in Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi and will open more such storage houses in Tier II and III cities as well. He, however, did not divulge any details on the VC funding.

According to reports, the firm had raised its second round of venture funding to the tune of USD 10-million from New York-based investment firm Tiger Global Management. Flipkart is profitable at the operational level but is still EBITDA-negative and expecting to be PAT-positive soon, he said.