Flipkart may now seek $70 billion valuation for its US listing

• Flipkart is currently valued at $37.6 billion.
• Flipkart was earlier planning to go public in 2022 seeking a valuation of $50 billion.
• The recent instability in the stock market seems to have compelled the company to reconsider its timeline.

Homegrown ecommerce giant Flipkart will now reportedly be seeking a valuation of $60-70 billion from its initial public offering (IPO) scheduled for 2023. This is nearly double the current valuation of Flipkart.

The Bengaluru-based company had raised $3.6 billion in July 2021, at a valuation of $37.6 billion. The round was led by Singapore-based GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP investments), Softbank Vision Fund 2 and Walmart. Tiger Global and Qatar Investment Authority, among other marquee investors also participated in the round.

The Walmart-owned company is looking to list in the United States of America (USA).

According to a Reuters report citing unnamed sources, Flipkart was earlier planning to go public in 2022 seeking a valuation of $50 billion. However, the recent instability in the stock market due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has compelled the company to reconsider its timeline.

Now, the Walmart-owned ecommerce giant wants to put in efforts to further boost its valuation before hitting the public market. For this, the company will reportedly focus heavily on online healthcare services and travel booking, the Reuters report, dated April 7, added.

Business Insider has reached out to Flipkart seeking their response to the report.

The report comes only a day after Flipkart announced the launch of its epharmacy vertical Flipkart Health+. The platform will compete with IPO-bound Pharmeasy, Reliance-owned Netmeds, Tata-owned 1mg and Amazon Pharmacy.

Notably, the epharmacy segment had reached its peak in India 2020 while the country was suffering through the worst of COVID-19. Flipkart had then decided to stay away from this segment by focusing only on over-the-counter medicines, which do not need any prescription. A year too later, but the company finally made its entry into this heavily crowded segment.

For the travel booking vertical, Flipkarrt had already acquired online ticketing platform ClearTrip in 2021. A source aware of the development told Reuters that the travel business has started showing “great signs” already.

Media reports had previously highlighted that Flipkart is looking to launch its IPO by November and December this year. However, there is also a chance that the Flipkart IPO may be pushed to March 2023 due to external factors like inappropriate market conditions.

Flipkart’s group chief executive (CEO) Kalyan Krishnamurthy, also reportedly told a select group of executives in January, that scaling the grocery business would be a critical part of the journey towards the public listing.

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