Flipkart Online Services Pvt Ltd, which runs the online retail firm Flipkart.com, has raised its second round of venture funding from New York-based investment firm Tiger Global Management. Sources familiar with the development told VCCircle that the new round of funding was closed a few months back and is believed to be in the tune of $8 million to $10 million. Flipkart earlier raised funding early venture capital firm Accel India.
This development comes as Flipkart has expanded from being an online book retailer to offering products in movies, games and music. It also plans to launch sale of software like Norton Anti-virus, Adobe, Windows, and others. Indian CD/DVD market was worth approximately Rs 10 billion in 2008 and is expected to grow to Rs 16 billion by 2013 at an yearly growth rate of 10 to 15%, said Flipkart.
E-mails sent to Flipkart co-founder and CEO Sachin Bansal did not elicit a response pertaining to VCCircle queries, seeking comments on the fund-raise, at the time of publication of this article.
Flipkart currently has over 6 million titles listed ranging across all categories. The Bangalore-based company is targeting revenues of Rs 100 crore by March 2011, said a recent release. The funding from Tiger Global, which has backed companies like local search firm Just Dial and coaching institute T.I.M.E, will help in this expansion. The new round of funding for Flipkart had attracted several venture capital firms, said a source.
Interestingly, Tiger Global has committed an investment of $150 million to Beijing Jingdong Century Trading, the operator of B2C site 360buy.com earlier this year.
Flipkart had revenue of Rs 25 crore in 2009-10, Flipkart said in an interview to CNBC-TV18 recently. It was set up in 2007 by IIT Delhi classmates Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, who later worked at Amazon before starting Flipkart. The company has a team of 200 members and currently operates from offices in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi.
Flipkart, which claims to have sold more than 5 lakh (half a million) books in the last two years, expects to sell more than 3,000 movie/music CD/DVDs per month initially and 20,000 CD/DVDs per month by the end of the year.