Flipkart

Sachin and Binny Bansal, both IIT Delhi alumni who had worked at Amazon, started Flipkart in October 2007 selling books online, the well-worn playbook for a first-generation marketplace. It grew into general retail long before Walmart announced a 77% controlling stake in May 2018, paying around $16 billion, with the deal completing that August. Walmart spent a further $3.5 billion in the first half of 2023 buying out other shareholders, including co-founder Binny Bansal, taking its ownership to roughly 80%. It still runs as an India-first marketplace, competing with Amazon on the same turf rather than folding into Walmart’s US operations.

Flipkart does not publish a current, concrete catalogue size, seller count or user total on its own corporate pages, so none is repeated here. What it does confirm is Flipkart Minutes, its quick-commerce arm, which passed 1,000 micro fulfilment centres inside two years of launch. Checkout supports cash on delivery, though not on every pin code, product category or order value, plus Flipkart Pay Later: a three-way choice between a 30-day pay-later window, a three-instalment split, or EMI over 3 to 12 months on mobiles, electronics, appliances and furniture, underwritten by lending partner PayU Finance.

Flipkart Plus, the loyalty tier, is not a subscription you buy — it is a free Silver or Gold status earned through SuperCoins cashback and order history, unlocking a higher cashback rate, an instant-discount offer during early access to sales like Big Billion Days, and a Netflix Mobile plan for members placing four or more qualifying orders in a month. Outside Plus, and outside listings carrying the Flipkart Assured badge introduced in 2016, the experience is closer to any large open marketplace: independent reviews describe missed delivery pickups, slow refunds and counterfeit or misrepresented items reaching buyers often enough to be a real, checkable pattern rather than a one-off.