Amid current speculations more than the timeline for Walmart-owned Flipkart’s impending initial public supplying (IPO), Walmart International’s President and CEO Judith McKenna has now clarified that there is “no specific timeline on that.” Speaking at the Deutsche Bank’s virtual DbAccess Global Consumer Conference 2021, McKenna stated, “It’s (Flipkart IPO) not an output, it’s not a target for us to do that. But if we build a strong business, and we continue to do the things that we need to do to ensure that long-term and sustainable growth, that is a possible route that we would consider in the future, but certainly no specific timeline on that.”
Flipkart is presently in talks to raise $3 billion from SoftBank Group and other investors and is aiming for a valuation of about $40 billion ahead of its IPO as quickly as the fourth quarter of this year as targeted by the firm, Bloomberg had lately reported. Flipkart Internet — the marketplace arm of Walmart-owned e-commerce firm Flipkart – had reported a 32 per cent jump in revenues to Rs 6,317.7 crore in FY20 up from Rs 4,803.9 crore in FY19 wile losses had also elevated 19 per cent to Rs 1,936.6 crore in FY20 from Rs 1,624.4 crore in FY19, regulatory filings from Tofler had showed. Likewise, its wholesale arm Flipkart India Private Limited had reported a 12 per cent enhance in its FY20 revenues to Rs 34,610 crore from Rs 30,931 crore in the last monetary year. Its losses, on the other hand, had decreased 18 per cent to Rs 3,150 crore in FY20 from Rs 3,835 crore in FY19.
Even as revenues for the firm have enhanced more than the previous handful of years, the path to profitability for Flipkart is nonetheless not defined even as that is the eventual purpose. In the course of profitability for all of Walmart’s enterprises, the firm would continue to invest in them like Flipkart to make sure that “We’re meeting customers where they need us to be.” Mckenna stated that could make the profitability path a small longer although. “Sometimes that does need some investment and might make that curve a little longer, because once we’ve got it in place, we can really double down on things like AdTech and financial services to people which are these profit streams that that can flow into.”
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Walmart International’s best executive also touched upon the small business-to-small business vertical of Flipkart referred to as Flipkart Wholesale. The small business was launched in September last year with the acquisition of the wholesale small business of Walmart in India that operated 28 Best Price money-and-carry wholesale shops supplying practically 5,000 products. In February this year, Flipkart Wholesale had also expanded to the grocery segment, which is also amongst the focus locations for the firm now. Flipkart currently had its B2C grocery delivery small business Flipkart Supermart that didn’t see as a lot as accomplishment its competitors like JioMart, Grofers, and so forth.
“One of the investment areas, though, that we’re making against that is in the wholesale business, which is serving the small, medium sized businesses…but then also you have a nascent grocery business. Grocery penetration in India is massively low, accelerated through Covid. We’re just expanding our office there and it’s one of the few areas where Walmart can really help and support in terms of the learning for working with that,” McKenna added.
While Covid had impacted the sale of non-important goods by means of e-commerce platforms such as Flipkart last year due to delivery restrictions, on the other hand, that was to an extent offset by development in the grocery segment. That’s yet another explanation for Walmart’s focus on the grocery marketplace. “There are local closures in place at the moment, but that will have a short-term impact…If there’s one area that I think we will see a greater acceleration in is grocery for India. That’s why we’re really thinking about that as well,” McKenna added buoyed by India’s focus on digital penetration via initiatives such as UPI.