South African media conglomerate Naspers had invested 858 million rand (around $84.86 $102.1 million) in the e-commerce major Flipkart in return for 10% stake in the company in August 2012, the company has revealed (pdf) in its earnings results for the year ending March 31, 2013.
This brings the valuation of the company to around $848.6 million, which ties in with the $850 million valuation reported by Livemint last January 2012 and down from the reported $1 billion valuation of the company. This brings the company valuation to around $1.02 billion.
In August 2012, Flipkart was said to have raised $150 million from Naspers, ICONIQ Capital and existing investor Tiger Global. Naspers had confirmed the investment to Medianama, however, it had refused to disclose the amount invested in Flipkart, citing confidential contractual terms. Flipkart has also confirmed this funding to Medianama and has said that it intends to utilize the funding to expand supply chain capacities, launch new categories and grow its talent pool.
The company has since then introduced categories like men’s apparel, footwear and sports & fitness category in October 2012 and women’s apparel in Feb 2013. It however had stopped offering electronic home appliances like Air Conditioners, Refrigerators, and Television Sets last month and in a surprise move, it also pulled the plug on its digital music store Flyte Music and shut down the Flyte brand entirely.
Interestingly, the site seems to have re-introduced home appliances category but offers only low cost electronic appliances like Water Purifiers, Iron Boxes, Vacuum cleaners and Voltage stabilizers among others at the time of writing this article.
It currently offers products from 15 different categories including Apparel, Footwear, Beauty & Personal care, Mobile Phones, Toys, Physical Software, Books, Music &Movie posters and Gaming among others. Flipkart had sold its front end retail operations WS Retail to a group of investors led by former OnMobile COO Rajiv Kuchhal in February 2013 and had adopted Amazon-like Hybrid marketplace model in April 2013.
Amazon India & Snapdeal Funding: On the other hand, e-commerce behemoth Amazon had launched its India marketplace earlier month starting with books, movies and TV shows and has introduced more categories like Kindle e-readers and Android tablets and electronic gadgets like mobile phones, tablets, cameras, and laptops among others, over the past month.
Online marketplace Snapdeal had also finally closed its $50 million (Rs 280 crore) investment round from eBay Inc, Recruit Co, new investors like Intel Capital, Saama Capital, Russian venture firm, ru-Net, existing investors like Nexus Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and IndoUS Venture Partners and a few angel investors like the founders of the US-based The FreshMarket and others.
redBus acquisition: Earlier this month, Naspers subsidiary Ibibo Group had acquired online bus booking portal redBus.in for an undisclosed amount. The valuation of the company was not disclosed, but different reports had suggested that Redbus was valued at $100 and $138 million. Our sources had suggested a valuation of between $100-120 million.
Corrigendum: We had erroneously converted the currency on the current conversion rate. It has now been corrected. We apologize for the error.