Two Indian startup giants are gearing to join forces in order to give third one a fierce fight. The two startups in question are India’s ecommerce giant, Flipkart and country’s famous movies and events ticketing platform, BookMyShow.
According to a media report, Flipkart is currently contemplating forging a strategic partnership by picking up a minority stake in BookMyShow, the name which over the years has become synonymous with entertainment in India. The report claims that with this investment, the company, which is considered as one of the most successful startups to ever come out of India, aims to build out its services and transaction offering against Paytm, a mobile wallet and ecommerce company.
Quoting two people aware of the development, the report claims that the talks, which are still in the preliminary stage might witness the numero uno Indian ecommerce company picking up a significant minority stake in BookMyShow.
Industry experts believe that building a strategic partnership with market leader BookMyShow will end up giving the Bengaluru-based ecommerce giant, which is currently also working on building out its own payments platform called PhonePe, a major stake in India’s ticketing market and a more frequent use case for its services to its over 100 million customers.
A Flipkart group company, PhonePe is a Fin-Tech company headquartered in Bangalore founded in December 2015, that provides online payment system based on UPI, which is a process in electronic funds transfer launched by National Payments Corporation of India.
If the Flipkart and BookMyShow deal goes through, it will be the latest amongst the country’s top three ecommerce firms moves to branch out and build integrated service verticals beyond their central offering of an ecommerce marketplace.
Paytm’s recent purchase of deals and discovery platforms Little and Nearbuy hints a journey in a similar direction. The company is reportedly also in talks to buy travel platform Via.com.
On the other hand, through Local Finds, Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Now, global ecommerce giant Amazon has been slowly but steadily building out its hyperlocal and services offerings to its customers all around the globe, including India.
If one looks carefully, one would notice that Indian ecommerce firms are aping the service vertical model that China’s ecommerce biggie Alibaba has been following for quite sometime now. The Chinese ecommerce player and its payments arm Ant Financial have invested capital in Chinese online to offline platform for services Meituan-Dianping
Flipkart has acquired a unique status in the $30 billion Indian e-commerce market. The company, which is currently in its tenth year of operation and enjoys a customer base of 100 million users has built the reputation of being an Indian e-commerce major by being customer centric and providing them with stupendous discounts and offers year after year.
In August, Flipkart raised the second portion of its Series J funding from SoftBank Group. The $2.5B investment by the Japanese telecom and internet giant was a part of its $93 billion Vision Tech Fund, which is considered as the world's biggest private equity fund.
BookMyShow is also doing quite good for itself and is focusing its attention on building original content offering on both its video and audio platform. The firm recently unveiled an audio entertainment platform called JukeBox. In a bid to reach to The company has decided to tier 2 and 3 towns of the country, the firm has decided to focus on local language content for both its video and audio platforms. This particular move can end up proving vastly beneficial for Flipkart given its repeated attempts and sayings wanting to serve deeper in the smaller towns of the country.
According to a media report, Flipkart is currently contemplating forging a strategic partnership by picking up a minority stake in BookMyShow, the name which over the years has become synonymous with entertainment in India. The report claims that with this investment, the company, which is considered as one of the most successful startups to ever come out of India, aims to build out its services and transaction offering against Paytm, a mobile wallet and ecommerce company.
Quoting two people aware of the development, the report claims that the talks, which are still in the preliminary stage might witness the numero uno Indian ecommerce company picking up a significant minority stake in BookMyShow.
Industry experts believe that building a strategic partnership with market leader BookMyShow will end up giving the Bengaluru-based ecommerce giant, which is currently also working on building out its own payments platform called PhonePe, a major stake in India’s ticketing market and a more frequent use case for its services to its over 100 million customers.
A Flipkart group company, PhonePe is a Fin-Tech company headquartered in Bangalore founded in December 2015, that provides online payment system based on UPI, which is a process in electronic funds transfer launched by National Payments Corporation of India.
If the Flipkart and BookMyShow deal goes through, it will be the latest amongst the country’s top three ecommerce firms moves to branch out and build integrated service verticals beyond their central offering of an ecommerce marketplace.
Paytm’s recent purchase of deals and discovery platforms Little and Nearbuy hints a journey in a similar direction. The company is reportedly also in talks to buy travel platform Via.com.
On the other hand, through Local Finds, Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Now, global ecommerce giant Amazon has been slowly but steadily building out its hyperlocal and services offerings to its customers all around the globe, including India.
If one looks carefully, one would notice that Indian ecommerce firms are aping the service vertical model that China’s ecommerce biggie Alibaba has been following for quite sometime now. The Chinese ecommerce player and its payments arm Ant Financial have invested capital in Chinese online to offline platform for services Meituan-Dianping
Flipkart has acquired a unique status in the $30 billion Indian e-commerce market. The company, which is currently in its tenth year of operation and enjoys a customer base of 100 million users has built the reputation of being an Indian e-commerce major by being customer centric and providing them with stupendous discounts and offers year after year.
In August, Flipkart raised the second portion of its Series J funding from SoftBank Group. The $2.5B investment by the Japanese telecom and internet giant was a part of its $93 billion Vision Tech Fund, which is considered as the world's biggest private equity fund.
BookMyShow is also doing quite good for itself and is focusing its attention on building original content offering on both its video and audio platform. The firm recently unveiled an audio entertainment platform called JukeBox. In a bid to reach to The company has decided to tier 2 and 3 towns of the country, the firm has decided to focus on local language content for both its video and audio platforms. This particular move can end up proving vastly beneficial for Flipkart given its repeated attempts and sayings wanting to serve deeper in the smaller towns of the country.
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