Flipkart looks to shift base to India: report

Walmart-owned e-commerce firm Flipkart is actively exploring options to domicile in India from Singapore, The Economic Times reported on Monday, citing people aware of the matter.

The country’s biggest consumer internet company was valued at $35 billion as on 31 January 2024, based on equity transactions effected by the company’s US parent Walmart.

This is down by $5 billion from the $40 billion that Flipkart was valued as on 31 January 2023.

During the year to January 2024, parent Walmart purchased an additional 10% stake in Flipkart for about $3.5 billion, bringing the overall valuation of the firm to $35 billion, and its total stake in the firm to 85%, the US retailer said in its annual report.

The shifting of the domicile status of Flipkart Pvt Ltd, the holding company based in Singapore, will lead to windfall gains for the Indian government in the form of taxes, ET said in the report.

In 2022, when payments firm PhonePe split from Flipkart group and shifted its domicile status home from Singapore, Walmart had paid about $1 billion in local taxes, the ET report said.

On Friday, 10 May, Press Insider reported that Tiger Global-backed financial services startup Groww has shifted its domicile to India from the US, following in the footsteps of peers such as Walmart-backed PhonePe that are setting up their bases in the country.

Groww had completed its domicile transition in March, founder and chief executive officer Lalit Keshre posted on social media platform X (the erstwhile Twitter).

Some Indian startups that are currently based out of Singapore and the US are exploring relocating to India as the regulatory framework back home becomes more favorable and the ease of doing business improves.

The other startups that are currently in the process of moving their bases to India include SoftBank-backed low-price e-commerce platform Meesho and Singapore-based business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce platform Udaan and merchants’ payments platform Pine Labs.

To be sure, not every Indian startup based abroad may have the resources to fund such relocation, a process dubbed “reverse flip”.

The Indian government has also been pushing for the relocation of these foreign-based startups.