Flipkart Group on Monday said it has raised $3.6 billion (about Rs 26,805.6 crore) in funding led by GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Walmart, valuing the e-commerce giant at $37.6 billion. The company, which competes with Amazon, Reliance Industries' JioMart and others in the burgeoning Indian e-commerce market, said it will continue to make deeper investments across people, technology, supply chain and infrastructure to address the requirements of a rapidly growing consumer base in the country. The current funding round has also seen participation from sovereign funds DisruptAD, Qatar Investment Authority, Khazanah Nasional Berhad as well as marquee investors Tencent, Willoughby Capital, Antara Capital, Franklin Templeton and Tiger Global.
Categories such as lifestyle, food and electronics accounted for over 1,350 sellers across the country last year.
Had he not taken his final curtain call on April 23, 1992, Satyajit Ray would still, undoubtedly, have been making movies.
Hero ISL received, in its third edition, a total viewership of 216 million as compared to around 207 million last year. One of the highlights of the season was the sharp increase in rural India viewership registering a cumulative figure of 101 million, indicating the widespread appeal of the sport.
Capital dumping is being used by foreign e-commerce firms to subsidise and engage in predatory pricing, oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL) has told the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) in an internal document. The document alleges that this is leading to massive unemployment and financial distress among small merchants and kirana stores. It consists of various recommendations and proposed changes that deal with Press Note 2 of 2018 (PN 2), which RIL wanted Assocham to present to the government, according to sources.
The development comes amid a growing clamour for the boycott of Chinese products in India, combined with the government's push for Aatmanirbhar Bharat.
Sooryavanshi and Annaatthe have already collected 6 percent of the film industry's 2020 revenue.
Its trajectory in telecom is well known but now it is pushing for a similar leap into the ranks of the top players in its other businesses: media and entertainment, e-commerce, a series of online businesses ranging from health to education, and retail.
'Sure, we are teenagers who are doing this part time, but we feel we are making some sort of an impact.'
From PhonePe to Jio, everyone wants to be a Super App but it is still unclear if they will actually work in India.
In the excitement over the allocation of bank licences for the private sector, a new category of licence offered by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last year went almost unnoticed. That was when the RBI consolidated the rules for prepaid payment instruments (PPI), popularly understood as e-wallets or gift cards. In the process, the regulator has fast-forwarded a bottom-up card usage industry in India that is completely different from the world of bank-linked credit and debit cards.
Prime was the first to grab streaming rights for seven titles for an estimated Rs 300 crore.
95 per cent of advertising inventory has been sold on television and 18 on-air sponsors have been signed up so far, the highest for any season.
Even as regulatory focus has zeroed in on foreign e-commerce giant Amazon, a domestic retail giant has been created almost below the radar in Reliance Retail (RR), one of the most crucial businesses for the group's future. From doorstep delivery of groceries, apparels to branded jewellery, medicines, toys, furniture to high street retailing, RR's presence in the world's fourth largest consumer market is just one part of the story.
Milk booths by Amul and Mother Dairy, a Kumbh phone by Reliance Jio, Dabur's toothpaste dispensers are among the many initiatives by brands steadying for a stint on haloed ground.
The Tata group's tryst with mobile services, with either CDMA or GSM technology, did not really fly, forcing it to close operations and write off losses. Now the group is back in the big game, this time straddling the telecom equipment, network and technology space in India as well as the global market. To this end, it is leveraging the opportunities that flow from 5G technology through open radio access network, or O-RAN. Recently, the Tata Sons' subsidiary Panatone Finvest acquired 43.3 per cent in Bengaluru-based telecom equipment manufacturer Tejas Network for Rs 1,850 crore and announced it would buy another 26 per cent of the voting capital through an open offer.
The government will set up a centre of excellence for visual effects and gaming with help from the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay.
The temptation to get into businesses that are hot is perhaps too great for any politician, no matter what his public slogans are. Nehru plunged into hot sectors of his time -- engineering and iron and steel. Modi has plunged into digital payments -- the hot sector of his time, notes Debashis Basu.
'For all of us at Amazon, it is 'Bharat first'.' 'We are keeping the Indian customer at the centre of what we are doing.'
Walmart, the world's largest retailer, is tripling its sourcing from India to about $10 billion a year by 2027, said Judith McKenna, president, and chief executive officer of Walmart International, the segment which includes the company's operations outside the US. "To achieve this, we are growing our sourcing team in India," said McKenna, during a fireside chat with YourStory founder Shradha Sharma at Converge@Walmart, the flagship event of Walmart Global Tech India. "Walmart has a 20-year history of sourcing from India and already exports more than $3 billion worth of Made-in-India goods each year to 14 markets worldwide." McKenna said the company has expertise in processes such as international standards and demand forecasting that businesses need to get ready to export.
With more than 10,000 stores under the various Reliance retail brands and over 2.5 million kirana stores already tying up with it, Jio's online marketplace would have the biggest hyperlocal logistics network in the country.
Fresh capital will help Flipkart further grow its e-commerce marketplace in India as the world's second-largest internet market begins to recover from the COVID-19 crisis.
While Reliance has the clout to negotiate prices with suppliers for its e-commerce, not to forget the cost advantage of integrated warehouse and supply chains, Amazon and Walmart are no pushovers, they too have deep pockets.
Whether one likes it or not, services constitute the value-addition sector that the country has to build on, using its comparative advantage in infotech and related skills, suggests T N Ninan.
The proposed amendments to the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, that are envisioned to protect consumer interests, may further compound the impact of multiplicity of regulations on the e-commerce sector, the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) had told the ministry of consumer affairs. IACC, the apex bilateral chamber for Indo-US business, had told the government that the proposed amendments would increase compliance liabilities that risk severely impairing the growth of the sector.
The words 'industry', 'industrial development', 'jobs', and 'employment' have been ringing with higher frequency since Mamata Banerjee stepped into her third term with landslide victory after a high-octane election last year. "Our government's next target is industrial development," the chief minister (CM) had been heard stating at different public meetings in the past few months - perhaps setting the tone for the sixth edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) slated for later this month. Investor summits by any state are about intent, big numbers, and tall claims. Yet in competitive federalism, its importance as a marketing tool is undeniable.
Gulabo Sitabo was made with a budget of Rs 40 crore to Rs 45 crore. Amazon Prime bought the streaming rights for Rs 60 crore to Rs 65 crore, helping the producers make over Rs 20 crore.
According to software company Mavernir, the new virtualised networks would lead to a saving of 40 per cent in capex and 34 per cent in terms of lower operations cost for operators.
A grouping of Indian and Indian-origin professionals working with tech giants like Google, Uber, Amazon and Facebook have written an open letter against the new religion-based citizenship law and the planned national register of citizens, terming them as "fascist". The letter by 'TechAgainstFascism' on online publishing platform Medium also urged the leaders to refuse to shut off the Internet at the "government's whim" and to ensure that content moderation is not skewing pro-government.
Small and big advertisers are making their presence felt this year far more than they did earlier, bringing a smile to the faces of the tournament's organisers and partners.
Betting as a function of pure luck is banned in the country, but games of skill with monetary stakes are not.
$47.6 bn capital invested across 921 deals in India in 2020, despite pandemic.
Footfalls will invariably come down to a trickle even after lockdown restrictions go away, and the only way to prevent someone else from poaching your consumer is to go down to the consumer herself. Consumers will prefer products and services to be delivered to their doorstep, hygienically and safely.
'There is definitely a skill war, or a talent war going on.'
Your weekly round-up of the top tech news.
Reliance has announced that it will roll out its e-commerce platform to as many as 1.2 million retailers and store owners in Gujarat. This is part of a nationwide roll-out that will come later this yea, reports Viveat Susan Pinto.
When on October 24, the Supreme Court, on a petition moved by the government, ordered payment of past dues according to its new definition of AGR, the country's second-biggest carrier Vodafone-Idea Ltd warned of shut down if no relief is given. The total dues for the industry ran into a whopping Rs 1.47 lakh crore. For an industry that has come from 7-8 operators to just three private players and state-owned fourth operator, the warning by Vodafone-Idea sounded like a death knell.
Chinese mobile brands are deeply entrenched in the Indian market. A move to bar them may send a bold diplomatic message. But its cost for the local industry is anybody's guess. In the event that Chinese brands face curbs, two handset makers - Samsung and Apple - squarely stand to gain.
The online pharmacy market, which was worth about $512 million in 2018, is growing at a CAGR of 63 per cent and is expected to hit overall revenues of over $3.6 billion by 2022.
Multinational conglomerate Tata Group has submitted its 'Expression of Interest' to become IPL title sponsor this year, joining education technology company Unacademy and fantasy sports platform Dream11 in a bid to replace Chinese mobile phone company Vivo for one season.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances