BANGALORE: Indian ecommerce flag bearer Flipkart has hit $1 billion in sales. This is a coming of age for Indian ecommerce as the market leader hits the target a year ahead of schedule. Global ecommerce giant Amazon reached the same target seven years after its launch. Flipkart, launched in October 2007, has achieved this milestone a few months faster.
"We are really proud and excited to announce that we have hit a run rate of $1 billion GMV (gross merchandise value) one year before our target," said cofounders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, in a joint message. "In March 2011 we announced that by 2015 we wanted to hit $1bn in GMV. At that point in time our run rate was $10 million."
Flipkart, which started out as an online retailer of books, has raised over $550 million in risk capital funding. The company, which is backed by South African internet major Naspers and investments funds like Dragoneer Investment Group, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Tiger Global and Accel Partners, was valued at $1.6 billion when they raised $360 million last year.
The company, which started out as an inventory retailer, pivoted to an online marketplace in 2012. The company, which ships out over 1 lakh orders a day Coupon Codes an average, now has about 1,000 merchants on its platform.
The Bangalore-based firm, which has over 10,000 employees, has also grown beyond ecommerce. It spun out its payment solution PayZippy into a separate entity last year. This service is used by other internet companies like MakeMyTrip, Zansaar and Yepme. The company is also opening up its logistics arm, eKart, which supplies to 150 cities, to other online retailers.
The company is also increasingly focusing on mobile commerce, as over 20% of its sales already comes from handheld devices. Sachin Bansal, in an earlier conversation with ET, had said that in the near future Flipkart.com would be a m-commerce based marketplace."
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