While Amazon had more than doubled its business in India in the last fiscal year, Walmart, on the other hand, has very little brand recognition in India — operating just 21 wholesales stores in the South Asian country. To improve its brand awareness among Indian consumers, the retailer considered expanding its store footprint as a key strategy. Walmart has been scaling up its investments in India as it sees the two Asian countries — China and India — as key growth markets.
Reports earlier suggested that both the rivals would invest $300 million to expand their network in Indian retail market and gain a major market share. A report by Goldman Sachs claims that the Indian e-commerce market is expected to soar to $103 billion by 2020.
Walmart intends to own a 55 percent stake in the deal that values Flipkart at $21 billion. Last year, the company was valued at $12 billion when Vision Fund, part of Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp, purchased nearly a fifth of the company for $2.5 billion.
The deal would impact Amazon the most, with Flipkart-Walmart union becoming a strong force to reckon with, in the subcontinent. But given that we are in the fun and ever-changing realm of e-commerce, anything can happen from here out. Now that Amazon and Walmart war has entered a new territory, it is to be seen which retailer gets to the checkout line first.