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Flipkart is looking at adding content to its portal Major e-commerce and retail players, including Paytm, Future Group and Flipkart, are set to invest close to $100 million in procuring and incorporating entertainment content, in a bid to take on  Amazon  India. According to sources, Paytm, which recently announced a host of new features in ‘Inbox’, its in-app messaging service, including live TV, news, cricket, entertainment videos and games, is planning to invest close to $30 million in this sector. Kishore Biyani-led Future Group is planning to make significant investments in creating a separate entertainment vertical on the company’s various apps and has set aside close to $14.5 billion for on-boarding artificial intelligence and machine learning on its platform to support entertainment content. It is also in talks with various entertainment content providers as well as movie theatre chains to provide tickets online as well as offline. Article Source :...

Last month, the tax department had written to Walmart saying that the US company can seek guidance about the tax liability under Section 195 (2) of the I-T Act E-commerce major Flipkart has shared 'some details' with the I-T authorities on its USD 16 billion deal with US-based Walmart, but the tax department will act only after regulatory approvals have been obtained, an official said. The department is currently studying the details received from the company, the official said, adding that they can issue notices seeking details of taxes withheld once the transactions are completed. Last month, the tax department had written to Bentonville -Arkansas based Walmart saying that the US company can seek guidance about the tax liability under Section 195 (2) of the I-T Act. Under Section 195 of the Act, anyone making payment to non-residents is required to deduct tax (commonly known as withholding tax). The official said Flipkart has filed "some details...

The sale of Flipkart is not just the sale of one company. It is the beginning of a new tomorrow. It is just that one cannot be sure whether that tomorrow will be better for India than today When Carl Douglas McMillon, president and chief executive officer of Walmart Inc, arrives at the Embassy Tech Village headquarters of Flipkart in Bengaluru later on Wednesday to acquire India’s first-to-a-billion-dollars-startup, he will be accompanied by Walmart International’s Judith McKenna and CEO (commerce) Marc Lore. It will be a triumphal return to India for the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer which will be partnering Google’s parent Alphabet Inc in a deal estimated at $18-20 billion enterprise value – Walmart will own about 60 per cent stake, and Alphabet will get to own about 15 per cent of the online market place. The passage of the past five years has obviously dulled memories. All recent media reports seem to have conveniently glossed over the history of Walmart’s prev...

In India, Amazon currently offers some groceries via a service named Pantry. It has also tied up with local vendors in four cities for Amazon Now, which promises two-hour deliveries Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more Inc expects groceries and household products to account for over half of its business in India in the next five years, as it moves to broaden offerings in the segment and foray into areas such as fresh produce. Amit Agarwal, the India head of Amazon, said in an interview on Friday that groceries and goods such as creams, soaps and cleaning products, were already the largest product category on Amazon in terms of number of units sold in India. "I would not speculate on when we would launch AmazonFresh but, absolutely, if you ask me the next five years of vision - from your avocados to your potatoes, and your meat to your ice cream - we'll deliver everything to you in two hours," he said. AmazonFres...

In this Sep 2016 interview with   Business Standard , Bansal said firm was all about team work Latest News   : In September 2016, after growth slowed in the first six monthsof the year, the e-commerce companies in the country were gearing up for the festive season that would see big sales. Leading the pack was Flipkart, the largest Indian e-commerce firm. In a telephonic interview with   Business Standard 's   Alnoor Peermohamed ,   Binny Bansal, the then CEO of Flipkart , had said the e-commerce giant was neither run him nor by Kalyan Krishnamurthy, the Tiger Global executive who has now been appointed the CEO of Flipkart. The e-commercemajor was all about team work, Bansal had said. Bansal had also said that the company had 100 million users. This growth occurred despite competition from the international e-commerce giant Amazon becoming aggressive in India.   T he task now was to convert the 100 million to shop every month on its platform, even a...

Infosys unveils modular e-commerce platform Software major   Infosys   Ltd on Wednesday unveiled a mobile first and modular platform to drive e-commerce programmes across retail channels. The platform has been developed by Skava, a Silicon Valley-based   e-commerce   start-up that the IT major acquired in June 2015 for $120 million, to enable businesses leverage cloud-based micro-services and white label applications to launch new offerings and improve conversion rates of digital channels. "The platform can integrate into present technologies, while providing a future-ready architecture for next-generation shopping experiences leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, natural language processing and virtual reality (VR)," the IT major said. The platform also has a mobile-first responsive web store and native mobile shopping applications that can be managed by non-technical business users through its studio, an intuitive web-based exper...

At townhall, Sachin Bansal concedes that Flipkart missed targets India’s largest e-commerce marketplace Flipkart has seengrowth stagnate and has come under pressure from global rival Amazon for the past year and a half. While the company has on many occasions tried to bury media reports on layoffs and high-level exits, in a rather frank discussion with employees on Friday co-founder   Sachin Bansal   admitted that the company has indeed missed targets. Bansal, in a townhall meeting with around 200 employees at Flipkart’s headquarters in Bengaluru, addressed their concerns over recent layoffs by saying that even the top management was not exempt from scrutiny over performance, including himself. Bansal who stepped down as the CEO of Flipkart in January this year, said that the move was “performance linked”. The frankness of the co-founder might be a rare occasion where top executives at large companies news   admit to their failures, but it’s also the first time ...

Wal-Mart buying Jet.com to lift online sales, battle Amazon Wal-Mart Stores Inc, vying to better challenge Inc, will pay about $3 billion for internet retailer Jet.com   and its innovative pricing software in the largest-ever deal for an   e-commerce start-up. The deal disclosed on Monday follows a five-year e-commerce acquisition spree in which Wal-Mart , the world's biggest traditional retailer, has already bought 15 start-ups, seeking the talent and technology needed to make it a dominant player online and narrow the massive gap with market leader   Amazon . Wal-Mart's online division has underperformed against Amazon, posting its slowest growth in a year in the first quarter as it struggled to gain traction with consumers, especially millennials. Jet.com   was launched by internet entrepreneur Marc Lore in July 2015 and includes software that can offer a customer lower prices as they add items to their shopping cart. Wal-Mart has said it would integra...

Flipkart buys Jabong, beats out Snapdeal, Future Group Flipkart-owned   online fashion   retailer Myntra has acquired smaller rival   Jabong   as it looks to strengthen its portfolio in the high-margin online fashion retail space. The move comes at a time when rival Amazon is pumping in billions of dollars to have a run at becoming the leader in India’s fledgling   e-commerce   space. Snapdeal   – which competes directly with   Flipkart   – large-format retail giant   Future Group , Aditya Birla owned Online shopping and fashion store. Shop the latest fashion trends online |   abof.com   and others were also in the running to acquire Jabong. The company in a statement said the deal will further strengthen its position as the “leader in fashion and lifestyle segment” in India. It did not disclosing the financial details of the deal. “Fashion and lifestyle is one of the biggest drivers of ecommerce growth in India. We hav...

Walmart rips up China online strategy, starts again with stake in Alibaba rival Walmart   Stores Inc has sold its Chinese   online   grocery store in return for a stake in the country's no. 2   e-commerce   firm, ripping up its previous strategy in efforts to cure ailing sales in one of the world's toughest retail markets. The deal will see the US grocery giant swap its Yihaodian platform for a 5% stake in Inc, worth about $1.5 billion by the firm's latest market value. The move also gives Walmart a ringside seat in bitter rivalry with Chinese e-commerce leader   Alibaba   Group Holding Ltd. The sell-off, announced on Monday, is a significant shift for Walmart in China, where it operates more than 400 bricks-and-mortar stores. The firm has been shuttering underperforming outlets and grappling with soft online sales in the world's second-biggest economy since it bought full control of Yihaodian in July last year, saying the site would play a l...

InMobi, a fledgling mobile ad network back in 2011, was out in the market to raise $25 million when Japanese investor  Softbank  decided to sink $200 million for a 35 per cent stake in the company. The firm jumped at the opportunity, took the money, and expanded rapidly. Three years later, in 2014, Softbank wrote down a majority of its investment. BACK TO BASICS 92%  VCs believe valuations for series B, C and D rounds will drop 62%  investors believe exit valuations will come down this year 92%  believe more strategic investors will do deals this year 46%  VCs believe that there will be increased focus on profitability this year 70%  VCs believe the seed stage will see the most activity in the current year Source: VCCircle PE-VC Outlook Survey 2016 Show full article

India’s largest online e-commerce firm Flipkart on Monday announced that co-founder Binny Bansal would be its new chief executive officer, while incumbent Sachin Bansalwould be elevated as the firm’s executive chairman.  Read Articles     

US e-commerce giant Amazon’s office leasing spree is likely to continue in 2016, too. In one of the most high-profile deals in the Mumbai office market, Amazon has taken 30,000 square feet of office space for its corporate headquarters at One BKC building in Bandra Kurla Complex area of Mumbai on lease, a source familiar with the development said. Amazon will pay monthly rent of Rs 265 a sq ft, entailing Rs 9.5 crore a year.  Read Articles 

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of digital wallet-turned-e-commerce firm Paytm, on Tuesday launched a scathing attack on Facebook’s campaign for its Free Basicsinternet access programme, calling for a ’ jihad ’ to save a free internet without any corporate agendas. Sharma said India’s digital independence is threatened by the world’s largest social network, tweeting, somewhat dramatically, “Oh my fellow Indians, either choose this and do a jihaad for independent internet later or pick net neutrality today.”  Facebook on Tuesday launched a missed call campaign in Indian newspapers asking users across India to support its Free Basics campaign – formerly known as the internet.org project – that allows subscribers not not to pay for data charges to telecom service providers. “I am surprised that we in this time and age might get our digital independence threatened. All for #NetNeutrality,” Sharma said on Twitter, adding “Open and out. Internet won’t be equal ...