FLIPKART ACQUIRES WALMART INDIA TO LAUNCH ITS OWN WHOLESALE MARKETPLACE

 In July 2020, the e-commerce company Flipkart has acquired a 100 per cent stake in Walmart India. Walmart is an American multinational retail corporation which deals with wholesale cash and carries.

Previously in 2018, Walmart India had acquired 16 billion dollars’ worth of stakes in e-commerce company Flipkart. After the acquisition was completed, Walmart held 77 per cent stakes in Flipkart. But, now the whole of Walmart India is acquired by Flipkart which is very beneficial for the economy of the country especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it is going to increase the employment status of many people and the standard of living will initially be increased shortly.

During the pandemic of COVID-19, the particular sector which is MSMEs, where the major part of the Indian population is dependent on it for their livelihood a long time, but now this sector is facing employment crisis due to the present scenario. And with Flipkart announcing the launch of Flipkart Wholesale, a digital market place which is catering to the local grocery stores and MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) is going to benefit the employment crisis which the country is facing presently. Flipkart wholesale is a new digital marketplace which is focusing on addressing the B2B (business to business) segment in India. This market place is going to effectively link the sellers and manufacturers on one end and MSMEs on the other end.

And with the acquisition, this would mean that the main competitors of Flipkart i.e. Amazon, Udaan, Myntra, Jiomart etc., will have to come up with new plans to keep their consumers occupied. The reason being that the merger with Walmart India, Flipkart is going to expand its services wide open to other new technologies and logistics all over India, and the capabilities will increase immensely. It is going to be a threat to the other e-commerce sellers as well as the local wholesalers.