Retail giant Walmart has made a significant investment in the e-commerce company Flipkart, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. Walmart recently made a big payment of $1.4 billion to buy a piece of a company called Flipkart from a hedge fund named Tiger Global. This deal changes the value of Flipkart from approximately $38 billion to $35 billion; previously, Flipkart was worth around $38 billion.
This happened because Flipkart had earlier sold parts of itself to different people, like a company called SoftBank from Japan and Walmart, back in 2021. This new deal caused the value of Flipkart to go down a bit.
Earlier reports indicated that private equity firms Accel and Tiger Global, who were early supporters of Flipkart, were also planning to sell their remaining stake in the company to Walmart. In total, Tiger Global held about 4% of Flipkart, as reported by the Economics Times.
Walmart initially obtained a majority stake of 77% in Flipkart for approximately $16 billion back in 2018. Notably, at that time, Walmart expressed its intention to take Flipkart public within four years of the acquisition.
As of now, Walmart, Flipkart, and Tiger Global have not officially commented on the recent transaction. But, this action from Walmart shows that the company is still very interested in making its position stronger in the fast-growing online shopping market. The deal also demonstrates Flipkart’s appeal to major investors in the industry.