Flipkart Bags Biggest Ever Start-up Funding, Buys eBay India

Online retail giant Flipkart is stronger by a few more billion dollars having closed the biggest-ever funding round. Flipkart as reported by Mint, has upped its ability by a whopping $1.4 billion from Tencent Holdings Ltd, a Chinese social networking and gaming Internet firm, eBay Inc and Microsoft Corp and upped its ability by so much more to compete with arch-rival Amazon India.

eBay Inc will invest $500 million in Flipkart Ltd, which in turn will buy eBay’s India business as part of the deal. Though lower than its peak valuation of $15 billion, the funding round values Flipkart at $11.6 billion; commendable for a company that saw a major slump in valuation by its own investors last year.

“This is a landmark deal for Flipkart and for India as it endorses our tech prowess, our innovative mindset and the potential we have to disrupt traditional markets. It is a resounding acknowledgement that the home-grown tech ecosystem is indeed thriving and succeeding in solving genuine problems in people’s daily lives across all of India,” Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal said in a statement.