The battle for the leadership position in the Indian ecommerce space has been raging. While both the major players Amazon and Flipkart have been claiming the throne, a new report on the financial figures for the last financial year 2017-18 released by Barclays claims Amazon has overtaken Flipkart, at least in so far as the GMV (gross merchandise value) is concerned.
While the figure for Amazon is reported to be $7.5 billion, its $6.2 billion for Flipkart. But this is the standalone figure in the case of Flipkart, without adding the figures for Myntra and Jabong. When added, they almost draw level. The figures for actual revenue, however, indicate Flipkart is ahead with $3.8 billion against $3.2 billion for Amazon. Again, in terms of the rate at which the two giants are growing goes in favour of Amazon with the company clocking a whopping 82% growth, y-o-y, whereas Flipkart could register only 47% increase over the previous year, modest, by comparison.
Though the two companies have not reacted to the report, Flipkart’s representative seemed to indicate that they still had the upper hand in the market and quoted a figure of 70% as their market share when they held the last Big Billion Days sale over a 5-day period. It will be difficult to predict what these figures would be this year since there have been many things happening within Flipkart after the American retail giant Walmart acquired a 77% stake in the company for $16 billion. Several senior personnel, including the two co-founders have left the company. How much of these exits lead to the business on the ground getting affected will only be seen when the figures emerge for the year 2018-19.
Amazon has been making heavy investments in its Indian arm since it sees the potential in the market and Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart only further emphasizes this point.
The above-mentioned report by Barclays too has painted a very rosy picture for the Indian ecommerce sector predicting that the business will double from the present levels of around $18 to $20 billion to $40 to $45 billion by 2020 even as the customers involved in making purchases online will increase from around 80 million to 180 million during the same period.