<story><title>Indian E-Commerce Firm Flipkart Raises Eye-Popping $1B</title><url>http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/indian-e-commerce-firm-flipkart-raises-eye-popping-1-billion/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tn13</author><text>I find Flipkart&amp;#x27;s valuation very puzzling clearly the investors have seen what I haven&amp;#x27;t. Flipkart&amp;#x27;s revenue is extremely less for a population of the size of India. They makes ~$200M in revenues per year with an operational loss which I am told is significant.&lt;p&gt;Flipkart has managed to scale its revenue but without making a profit. Even this would have appeared as a good opportunity if Flipkart was kind of de-facto e-commerce business in India. Turns out that it is not. Snapdeal, Junglee (Amazon India) are pretty close. Myntra was the leader in apparel and fashion products sale online which was then acquired by Flipkart. (Myntra was not profitable either).&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to understand why anyone believes that Flipkart would ever make profit in next 5 years or so. I find it hard to believe.&lt;p&gt;Unlike USA, India has not yet figured out how to build proper usable roads, the cities are not planned and India does not have a proper addressing system. Government regulations have further made life difficult for courier companies. All this has resulted into cities and towns where traveling over few kms is very expensive and time consuming as a result small shops catering to need of local communities have sprung up like mushrooms. Current India is probably resembles more to the A&amp;amp;P days of USA.&lt;p&gt;My assertion is validated by the fact that Travel Booking and Movie ticket booking websites in India are growing fast and also very profitable.</text></comment>
<story><title>Indian E-Commerce Firm Flipkart Raises Eye-Popping $1B</title><url>http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/indian-e-commerce-firm-flipkart-raises-eye-popping-1-billion/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>piyushpr134</author><text>For the uninitiated: Flipkart is AMZN of India. They are doing tonnes of sales here. FK is getting so much valuation as India does not have a big enough organised retail (roughly 5%). This means there is a generation which would move on from unorganized retail to online. And hence the astronomical valuations. FK also has some unique ideas. For instance, they launched Moto e, g and x in India as exclusive sellers. They managed to sell 1 million of those phones in last 6 months. This alone would have easily resulted in a $20-25 million rev.</text></comment>