Flipkart India trims losses as revenues grow in FY20

Walmart-owned e-commerce major Flipkart India Pvt. Ltd narrowed its net losses in the fiscal year ended 31 March 2020 while revenues grew.

The business-to-business (B2B) wholesale arm of Flipkart posted a net loss of ₹3,150 crore in 2019-20, compared with ₹3,835 crore in the previous year, according to regulatory filings accessed through market intelligence platform Tofler.

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Revenue grew 12% during the year to ₹34,610 crore.

The e-commerce giant saw its total expenses rise to ₹37,760 crores in 2019-20, from ₹34,766 crore in 2018-19. This included employee benefit expenses of ₹309 crore last fiscal, up from ₹246 crore a year earlier.

Last year, Flipkart’s Singapore parent entity had infused close to ₹5,701 crore in Flipkart India.

Flipkart India works with brands and manufacturers to directly purchase goods in bulk, and then sells them to B2B partners and sellers, which then list them on the marketplace.

In September, Flipkart India launched its digital B2B marketplace, Flipkart Wholesale to connect local manufacturers with retailers while helping kirana stores and small and medium enterprises digitize their procurement process.

The platform, which is targeted at fashion retailers, especially of footwear and apparel, was launched initially in Gurugram, Delhi and Bengaluru. Flipkart plans to expand this platform to an additional 20 cities, adding categories such as home and kitchen and grocery.

During the launch, Flipkart said that it aims to rope in over 300 strategic partners and have more than 200,000 listings in two months. In addition, the platform will enable the on-boarding of 50 brands and over 250 local manufacturers in the coming days, the homegrown e-commerce major had said.

In July this year, Flipkart had acquired the Indian operations of its US-parent Walmart to compete with Reliance Industries Ltd and Amazon, among others. With this consolidation, Walmart India Pvt. Ltd’s entire portfolio was absorbed by Flipkart, including Walmart India’s Best Price cash-and-carry wholesale stores.

This came at a time when arch-rival, Reliance Industries-owned JioMart, began the pilots in May in Maharashtra, allowing small shopkeepers and local kiranas to make online deliveries.

Mint also reported in September that Flipkart was looking to go public as early as next year, which could value the entity at $40-45 billion, as it looked at an overseas listing.

Earlier in July, this year, the Flipkart Group which owns fashion e-tailer, Myntra, digital payments company, PhonePe, and logistics arm, Ekart raised $1.2 billion in investment led by parent Walmart, which valued the Group at around $25 billion.