Kishore Biyani surprisingly backed Flipkart. Here's how

Kishore Biyani, founder and CEO of Future Group, who has many a times criticised e-commerce companies, backed Flipkart after it projected itself as an "Indian company" and having a home-grown success story akin to that of Infosys, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Airtel.

"In that sense, yes, they are Indian if you look at likewise comparisons," Biyani said.

It was last month that Flipkart had called itself as Indian as the other domestic entrepreneurial mascots.

"Flipkart is as homegrown and Indian as an Infosys, HDFC or ICICI, which also have significant foreign capital invested in them," it had told ET.

Even though Flipkart and cab-hailing company Ola have a majority of their funding coming from international players, there founders have never shied away from positioning them as Indian companies. Co-incidentally, both Flipkart and Ola have been aggressively asking for equality for local companies pitted against multinational rivals, which in their case are Amazon and Uber.

As per industry analysts, Flipart could have further lessened its Indian shareholding after the recent funding round by eBay (California, US), Tencent (Shenzen, China), and Microsoft (Washington, US).

Biyani has always been vocal about his disliking towards ecommerce business in India, saying that these companies disregard FDI rules.

"They (online retailers) sell to consumers. They are violating the law (on overseas investment) in spirit and in letter," said Biyani.