Flipkart is an Indian e-commerce company headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka. It was founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007.

In its initial years, Flipkart focused on online sales of books, but it later expanded to electronic goods and a variety of other products. Flipkart offers multiple payment methods like credit card, debit card, net banking, e-gift voucher, and the major of all Cash on Delivery.The cash-on-delivery model adopted by Flipkart has proven to be of great significance since . credit card and net banking penetration is very low in India [edit]History Flipkart was founded in 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, both alumni of theIndian Institute of Technology Delhi. They worked for Amazon.com before quitting and founding their own company. Initially they used word of mouth marketing to popularise their company. A few months later, the company sold its . first book on flipkart.com John Woods' Leaving Microsoft to Change the World Today, as per Alexa traffic rankings, Flipkart is among the top 20 Indian Web sites and has been credited with being India's largest online bookseller with over 11 million titles on offer. Flipkart claims to have had at least 100% growth every quarter since its founding.The store started with selling books and in 2010 branched out to selling CDs, DVDs, mobile phones and accessories, cameras, computers, computer accessories and peripherals, and in 2011, pens & stationery, other electronic items such as home appliances, kitchen appliances, personal care gadgets, health care products etc. Further in 2012, Flipkart added A.C, air [6] coolers, school supplies, office supplies, art supplies & life style products to its product portfolio. As of [7] today, Flipkart employs more than 4500 people. [edit]Funding Initially funded by the Bansals themselves with 400,000, Flipkart has raised funding from venture [9][10][11] capital funds Accel India (US$1 million in 2009) and Tiger Global (US$10 million in 2010 [12][13][14] and US$20 million in June 2011). Flipkart.com, on August 24, 2012 announced the completion of its 4th round of $150 million funding from [15] MIH (part of Naspers Group) and ICONIQ Capital. [edit]Acquisitions 2010: WeRead, a social book discovery tool. The stated goal was to give Flipkart a social recommendation platform for buyers to make informed decisions based on recommendations from people within their social network. 2011: Mime360, a digital content platform company.
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2011: Chakpak.com is a Bollywood news site that offers updates, news, photos and videos. Flipkart acquired the rights to Chakpaks digital catalogue which includes 40,000 fi lmographies, 10,000 movies and close to 50,000 ratings. Flipkart has categorically said that it will not be involved with the [18] original site and will not use the brand name. 2012: Letsbuy.com is India's second largest e-retailer in electronics. Flipkart has bought the company [19][20] for an estimated US$25 million. Letsbuy.com had been closed down and all the traffic of Letsbuy [21] is diverted to Flipkart.

[edit]Business

results
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Flipkart's reported sales were 40 million in FY 20082009, 200 million in FY 20092010 and [1] 750 million for FY 20102011. In FY 20112012, Flipkart is set to cross the 5 billion (US$100 million) mark as Internet usage in the country increases and people get accustomed to making purchases [25] online. Flipkart projects its sales to reach US$10 billion by year 2014. On average, Flipkart sells nearly [26] [27] 20 products per minute and is aiming at generating a revenue of 50 billion (US$1 billion) by 2015. [edit]Locations The company's headquarters is located in Bangalore's Koramangala neighbourhood. Flipkart has offices, warehouses and customer service centres across India. Warehouses are located in the following cities, often near airports. From here on, Flipkart delivers the products to 95 cities which includes 2500 pincodes across India through its own logistics. Bangalore, Karnataka Whitefield, Bangalore, Karnataka Delhi Bhiwandi, Maharashtra Mumbai, Maharashtra Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh Chennai, Tamil Nadu Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu Noida, Uttar Pradesh Kolkata, West Bengal

[edit]Current

Developments

The company is expanding its courier service network to deliver products quickly, and to extend the COD option to most of the Indian parts as well. Recently the company started Flipkart Self delivery to offer faster shipping times. With the new delivery system customers can now track their orders in real time in [28] Flipkart's website itself. [edit]Products Flipkart started with selling books. In 2010, they added to their catalogue media (including music, movies and games) and mobile phones and accessories. In 2011, product launches included cameras, computers, pens & office supplies, computer accessories, home and kitchen appliances, personal care, health care, gaming consoles, audio players and televisions. In 2012, product launches includes health & beauty products, Life style products which includes watches, belts, bags & luggage. In November 2011, Flipkart launched a new Electronic Wallet feature that allows shoppers to purchase credit to their Flipkart account using credit or debit cards, and can subsequently be utilised to make purchases on the site, as and when required. From June 2012, Flipkart allowed people to buy toys, [30] posters and from October 2012, Flipkart entered into apparel retailing. [edit]Flyte
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Digital Music Store

In October and November 2011, Flipkart acquired the websites Mime360.com and [18] Chakpak.com. Later, in February 2012, the company revealed its new Flyte Digital Music [31] Store. Flyte, a legal music download service in the vein of iTunes and Amazon.com, will offer DRM-free MP3 downloads. Flyte offers browse by language options where users can download international as well as regional songs. Flipkart has listed the music based on its genre on the new music store and has given [32] a lot of variety. Users can shop for tracks from various albums starting at 6 on the store. A purchased song can only be downloaded maximum 4 times on an internet enabled device. Flipkart hits 100Cr mark [33] in July 2012, while Flyte garners 600K downloads in 5 Months. Flipkart has launched the ebook application on the Android platform on Nov 28, 2012.

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