Now Flipkart goes global as Amazon extends reach to India

Key Highlights

• Flipkart Global will focus on selling Indian products abroad.
• Flipkart claimed to have over 1 lakh registered sellers in India.
• Amazon launched a 'Global store' last year.

Home grown e-commerce website, Flipkart has said its products will now be available worldwide.

With its acquisition of eBay in July this year, the company will spread its reach to nearly 200 countries, a report by Economic Times dated August 21 quoted Flipkart’s Anil Goteti in charge of eBay operations in India.

Flipkart claimed to have over 1 lakh registered sellers in India who will be allowed to sell their products abroad. The Flipkart Global initiative would focus on the sale of saris, jewellery, handicrafts, accessories among other categories, the report said.

The competition in India’s e-commerce business is slowly weeding out the small players leaving two giants – Amazon and Flipkart. While the latter is reaching out to non-resident Indians abroad, the former adopted a ‘think globally act locally approach,’ with its ‘global store.’

Around October 2016, Amazon launched its global store in India. The Seattle-based company said Indians would get access to 40 lakh products from international brands on its US website and pay in local currency. Amazon said it would start providing Indians access to its US products and will slowly incorporate more categories and products.

Through this operation, Amazon allowed its 23,000 Indian sellers to sell abroad.

On the other hand, Flipkart had acquired eBay following an investment of $500 million from the latter.

With its latest announcement Flipkart will enable Indian sellers to sell to over 17.1 crore active customers of eBay globally in over 190 countries, the report added.

Flipkart claimed to have a registered customer base of 10 crore in India and is currently valued at $11.6 billion after its latest round of funding.

Also Read: Flipkart now valued at $11.6 billion after Softbank's $2.4 billion