E-commerce firm Flipkart raises $200 million

Bangalore : India’s leading e-commerce platform Flipkart raised $200 million (Rs.12 crore) from its three overseas institutional investors – Naspers, Accel and Tiger Global – to strengthen its supply chain and develop talent pool, the B2C company said Wednesday.

“The amount is the largest to be raised ever by an e-commerce company in India and will be used to build our platform capabilities for making the supply chain robust and develop our talent pool,” Flipkart.com co-founder and chief executive Sachin Bansal said in a statement here.

With 9.6 million registered users and a million visitors to its portal a day from across the country and overseas, the company’s e-platform offers products across 17 categories, including books, apparel, footwear, toys, accessories, sports and fitness.

“The latest investment validates confidence of our equity partners in our capabilities and the potential of e-commerce in the sub-continent. We are building a world-class platform to create a host of opportunities for online shopping,” Bansal asserted.

The six-year-old company has set a target of reaching $1-billion worth gross merchandise volume by 2015 with supply-chain innovations to improve its customers’ shopping experience and provide sellers a scalable platform to do business,” Bansal added.

The private-held company, however, did not disclose the equity holding of its promoters, investors and the amount it raised in the previous rounds of funding and dilution after this round of funding.

The decade-old New York-based Global investment firm Tiger has invested substantially in global Internet and technology firms such as Facebook, Linkedin, Yandex, 360buy, Makemytrip and Justdial among others.

The two decade old US-based Accel invests in start-ups and firms across verticals and geographies, including India.