Flipkart infuses nearly $700 million in its marketplace and healthcare unit

Bangalore: Ecommerce major Flipkart has invested about $553 million in its marketplace business, according to a recent regulatory filing in Singapore. Additionally, it has invested $143 million in its healthcare arm Flipkart Health, these filings show. With the new capital coming in, this takes the total cash flow by Flipkart into the two entities—Flipkart Marketplace Private Limited and Flipkart Health Private Limited—to approximately $700 million.

The fresh cash is being deployed at a time when Walmart-owned Flipkart is scaling up several new businesses such as epharmacy, travel, social commerce platform Shopee and doubling down on its grocery business.

The Bengaluru-based company has also allotted new ESOPs (Employee Stock Owner Program) in Flipkart Pvt Ltd, the filing showed.

The investments in Flipkart Marketplace and Flipkart Health are made through Flipkart Pvt Ltd. Flipkart is domiciled in Singapore and has various entities registered in India through which it conducts its business here.

A Flipkart spokesperson declined to comment on ETTech’s query on Thursday.

Apart from the marketplace investment, Flipkart’s new money for the health arm is significant as it recently appointed Prashant Jhaveri as its CEO.

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In an interview with ET in January, Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy had said that healthcare would be one of the businesses it wants to scale this year.

Flipkart has also made strategic investments for its pharmacology and travel units.

This comes at a time when upstarts like Meesho are trying to battle bigger rivals like Flipkart and Amazon India and Singapore’s Shopee, which abruptly exited the local market earlier this week, first reported by ETTech. Gone.

Last year, Flipkart raised $3.6 billion in its first external funding since its acquisition of Walmart in 2018. The round valued the company at $37.6 billion, compared to $24.9 billion in 2020 with $1.2 billion raised in an internal round led by Walmart.

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), Singapore government’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Flipkart’s largest shareholder Walmart led the round with participation from existing backers such as Qatar Investment Authority.

“Shopsea, grocery, travel and healthcare, these are big and we have invested in a big way,” Krishnamurthy told ET in January.

ET reported on February 18 that Flipkart had started delivering groceries in parts of Bengaluru in 45 minutes, halving its quick delivery service time from 90 minutes under Flipkart Quick. It plans to expand to 45-minute delivery in other cities, but is unlikely to enter the 15-20 minute ultrafast grocery delivery business. Krishnamurthy had said in his interview with ET that he doesn’t think 15-minute delivery is the right model for consumers on a longer-term basis.

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Originally published at Pen 18