Flipkart On Tuesday, Flipkart – who raised on of the largest rounds in 2013 – announced that the company had raised a new round of funding valued at $1 billion. Flipkart’s $1 billion round comes in as the largest ever funding round for an Indian company, and the second largest round globally, just behind Uber’s recent $1.2 billion round. The Indian eCommerce giant, which is often mentioned in the same breath as Amazon, announced the massive round via Twitter:

Flipkart is really just about the only company that can even be considered to be a direct Amazon competitor. Amazon still blows Flipkart away, but they are in the same ballpark. Essentially, Flipkart is the Indian version of Amazon, selling products across many of the same categories: movies, music, games, mobiles, cameras, computers, healthcare and personal products, home appliances and electronics, stationery, perfumes, toys, apparels, shoes, and much more. The company was founded in 2007 by two ex-Amazon employees. Prior to the $1 b round, Flipkart had raised a total of somewhere around $770 million. Prior to the announcement of the round, there had been some speculation that Flipkart was gearing up for an IPO. However, now it seems that the company will put off the idea. Further, according to Quartz, Flipkart will devote a large amount of this funding towards mobile:

Flipkart says that their priority is to develop their mobile commerce platform further as 50% of their transactions happen on mobile devices. The company is also going to focus on wearable technologies market and is hiring to step up its R&D work in this space. They will be hiring 1,000 engineers and Indian tech talent from internet companies in the Silicon Valley.1

  1. Shruti Chakraborty, Quartz, “With a $1 billion funding round wrapped up, what next for Flipkart?,” 29 July 2014  ▲