With the upcoming festive sale season being just weeks away, online giants seem are gearing up for a massive fight in the Indian e-commerce space. As the customers look for lucrative offers and large discounts, companies like Flipkart, now under the management of Walmart, are stacking up the moola to meet the requirements. In its statutory filings with the authorities, Flipkart has claimed that its parent company, Flipkart Marketplace Singapore has pumped in Rs 3,462 crore to it as internal funding. It is understood the amount was transferred in two tranches, according to a PTI report.
A major portion of this amount, Rs 3,007 crore was transferred first and about a fortnight later another Rs 455 crore was transferred through another resolution by the board of directors.
There is no doubt the fierce competition with Amazon will find these funds being deployed by Flipkart to counter the challenge. There have been enough activities through the year initiated by both the ecommerce majors to prepare themselves for the battle ahead.
At least, there is widespread expectation among the observers in the market that there would be attempts made to woo the 20 million online shoppers in the country by both the companies. The volume of sales during this peak season is likely to touch $3 billion, according to one estimate. Funds have never been the limiting factor for them.
In preparation for the upcoming Big Billion Days sale, Flipkart has also announced that it is betting big on the perfumes category and is undertaking an overhaul of this category under a program called ‘Project Authenticated’. Under this, Flipkart aims to sell perfume products from brand-approved sellers and there will be a seal of authenticity to give the level of comfort to the buyers in a product-line which is mostly purchased through the touch-feel-smell route by the buyers.