Flipkart in talks with Google, others for raising $15 billion in funding

E-commerce giant, Flipkart has held talks with Google and other investors for its next round of funding, a report by Factor Daily said on Friday.

Earlier Flipkart raised funds to the tune of $15.1 billion in July 2015 from Tiger Global and Steadview Capital and is expected to raise fresh capital in a round of anywhere between the $10 billion to $15 billion range, the report said.

However, the report mentioned that the talks were ‘early and exploratory in nature.’

The report also cited that it’s still not clear whether Flipkart has been talking with Google’s corporate venture arm, CapitalG (earlier known as Google Capital) or with Google itself.

Further the report added that for Google, a foothold in India’s over $15 billion ecommerce market will help open a new battlefront against Amazon, Alibaba, and even Facebook.

In September last year, Flipkart also approached Walmart for strategic investments and the report said that those talks ‘were not dead yet.’

Flipkart has raised over $3 billion in funding since its initiation back in 2007 was founded by two former Amazon engineers, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal.

Google has made several high profile global investments, including Uber, and three Indian startups — Freshdesk, Practo and Commonfloor.com.

The key funding move will be based on Flipkart’s valuation, as the company pushes its ‘turnaround story’ forward under the new CEO Binny Bansal who took over from cofounder Sachin Bansal in January 2016, the report added.