Ikea's first India store opens today, aims to reach 200 mn people in 3 yrs

The company's products offering was based on a thorough understanding of the needs and aspirations of Indian households.

 

Companies News: Ikea aims to reach 200 million people in India in the next three years and its journey is going to be based on affordability and accessibility, the Swedish home furnishings chain’s Group Chief Executive Officer Jesper Brodin said on Wednesday on the eve of the launch of the company’s first Indian store in Hyderabad.

Brodin said the company would like to keep the product prices within the reach of various segments of the society without compromising on quality. The furniture retailer, he added, wanted to expand its footprint in other Indian cities as quickly as possible to gain a significant share in one of the largest markets in the world. In 2013, the Centre had cleared Ikea's Rs105-billion foreign direct investment (FDI) proposal to set up 25 single brand retail stores in the country. Of this investment commitment, the company has invested Rs10 billion on the Hyderabad store, which has a 400,000-square-foot built-up area, besides acquiring land in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Delhi to set up similar stores in the coming years.

Ikea First India Store

He said the company’s products offering was based on a thorough understanding of the needs and aspirations of Indian households, and in this process it had also learnt new things that could be replicated in other stores outside India.

The first store in Hyderabad will be followed by online presence, a store and touch points in Mumbai next year. Subsequently, it will set up one store each in Bengaluru and National Capital Region (NCR). Besides, the company is also planning to invest Rs7.5 billion to build its own warehouses and a large distribution centre in Maharashtra in the next three years, as most of its import consignments reach Indian shores via Mumbai port.

In the next phase, Ikea will expand to other cities, such as Ahmedabad, Surat, Pune, Chennai and…continue reading

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News Source : BS

Walmart Flipkart $16 bn Deal: All your important questions answered here

How big is the deal, who will benefit, who has opposed it, and what comes next? Business Standard answers key questions on the Walmart-Flipkart deal.

Companies News India : US retailer Walmart Inc said on Wednesday it will pay $16 billion for roughly 77 per cent stake in e-commerce firm Flipkart, as it competes with Amazon Inc in India, which is an important growth market.

With the deal done, Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal will be exiting the Bengaluru-based company. According to his Facebook post addressing Flipkart employees, Bansal plans to catch up on gaming and brush up his coding skills.

Here are some key things to know about the deal:

• How big is the deal in dollar terms?
  Walmart will pay $16 billion for a roughly 77 per cent stake in Flipkart. According to Reuters, Walmart has said that it plans to fund the Flipkart deal through a combination of newly-issued debt and cash on hand. The investment will also include $2 billion of new equity funding.
  This is the US retailer’s biggest deal ever.

Why is Walmart buying a majority stake in Flipkart?

• From Walmart Inc, $16 billion is a small price to pay as it aims to compete with global e-commerce giant Amazon, Karan Choudhury writes for Business Standard.
  With this deal, Walmart hopes to finally prop up a formidable opponent against the Jeff Bezos-run juggernaut. According to the report, Walmart hopes that Flipkart will help it understand the e-commerce business better and take on Amazon, not only in India but globally as well.

What does Flipkart get out of the Walmart deal?

• Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal said Walmart is the ideal partner for the next phase of Flipkart journey as he saw e-commerce having great potential to grow from its current status of being a relatively small part of retail in India.
  Walmart will also expand Flipkart’s online marketplace capabilities by bringing in a host of new products and private labels.

What happens to the Flipkart brand now?

• Walmart and Flipkart will remain separate brands, according to agency reports. Further, the Indian e-commerce company will have an independent board. However, the board will be revamped to give representation to the US firm.

Who will head Flipkart after the Walmart deal?

• Walmart’s Krish Iyer will be the CEO of the company, according to agency reports. The company will continue to be based out of Bengaluru.

What about Flipkart’s founders, are they staying onboard?

• Binny Bansal, who co-founded Flipkart with Sachin Bansal 11 years ago, will retain his 5.5 per cent stake in the company and will be chairman of the company’s board, according to news agencies.
• Sachin is exiting the Bengaluru-based company post the Walmart deal. According to his Facebook post, he plans to catch up on gaming and brush up his coding skills as he takes time off to finish few pending personal projects.

Read More on → Walmart Flipkart Deal

Story of Flipkart: From modest start to Walmart nuptial and everything in between

Flipkart has given India its big startup success story — the one which is likely to be quoted by starry-eyed entrepreneurs for years to come.

Companies News : From selling books online to striking a jaw-dropping USD 16 billion deal with the world’s largest retailer Walmart, all within 11 years, Flipkart has given India its big startup success story — the one which is likely to be quoted by starry-eyed entrepreneurs for years to come. Former employees of US e-commerce giant Amazon, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal had met in 2005 at IIT-Delhi. Flipkart was launched in October 2007.

The idea was simple. Consumers could shop online and get books delivered to their doorstep. Flipkart registered 20 shipments in the year of its debut. It wasn’t an easy road as Internet penetration was abysmally low and e-commerce, unheard of. Bricks and mortar retailers were not threatened and many dismissed e-tailing as a foreign concept saying that Indians want to touch and feel’ whatever they buy.

Today, Indian e-commerce industry is already close to USD 30 billion in size and analysts expect this to zoom to USD 200 billion by 2026. The growth of the sector was comfortably in sync with the meteoric rise of Flipkart.

From a modest two-bedroom apartment in Koramangala, the Bengaluru-headquartered company now has multiple offices across the country. A bulk of its operations are run out of a plush campus in the city that is spread over 1 lakh sq ft and houses 6,800 employees.

It was almost two years after starting the business that Flipkart got its first full-time employee in Ambur Iyyappa, who went on to become a millionaire, thanks to the ESOPs. The headcount was rapidly scaled to 150 that year.

In October the same year, Accel Partners came on board as an investor and pumped in USD 1 million. A few months later, US hedge fund Tiger Global bought into the vision and Flipkart received a funding of USD 10 million.

A number of funding rounds later, Flipkart raised USD 1.4 billion from Tencent, eBay and Microsoft, followed by USD 2.5 billion investment by SoftBank Vision Fund last year. The year 2010 was an important one for Flipkart with the company shipping among other things, electronics and mobile phones. This category now makes up for a significant portion of the sales for the online platform.

It was also the year when Flipkart pioneered ‘Cash on Delivery’ in India, which changed the course of online retail in the country as consumers now paid for items only after receiving them, adding a layer of comfort to online shopping. Flipkart launched its logistics unit, eKart to smoothen deliveries.

In 2016, Flipkart achieved the milestone of 100 million registered customers and saw Sachin and Binny earning a spot among TIME magazine’s list of 100 most influential people. The company made its first acquisition with WeRead and since then, it has acquired a number of companies including Letsbuy, FX Mart, fashion e-tail player Myntra and UPI-based payments startup PhonePe. It also bought a majority stake in companies like Jeeves and ngpay.

At the beginning of last year, Kalyan Krishnamurthy was named as the new CEO, moving Binny Bansal to the role of Group CEO. Reports suggested that Tiger Global wanted better control of the organisation and hence, the decision. Bansals’ e-commerce bet finally has paid off big time and set the 2018 M&A counters ringing with US retailer Walmart buying about 77 per cent stake in Flipkart for USD 16 billion.

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