India’s most important start-up, Flipkart is picking up a over 34 percent stake in MapmyIndia, a digital mapping firm in a deal that evaluates the latter at $260 million. For Flipkart, this deal is likely to give it a highly competitive edge in terms of the supply chain as well as logistics segments. This investment is expected to be one among the largest strategic investments that were made by the Bengaluru based company that was valued about $15 billion at the last funding round.
It is likely that Flipkart will get two seats on the MapmyIndia’s eight member board. The Hari Vasudev, the senior VP for Engineering and Surojit Chatterjee, the Head of Consumer Experience as well as Growth is likely to join the board of the MaymyIndia. Flipkart will invest a sum of up to $5 million in the primary capital. Flipkart acquired a stake of 32 percent from the early investors’ venture capital funds of MapmyIndia – Lightbox and Nexus Venture Partners. This was revealed by the filings with the MCA (Ministry of Corporate Affairs). The secondary part of this transaction took place at a discount to the valuation of Rs 1,600 crore, stated one of the sources with knowledge of the development.
Flipkart is targeting a $10 million in GMV (gross merchandise value) by March 2016. It plans to deploy the location intelligence abilities from MaymyIndia across its logistics network in order to strengthen its first mile pickup as well as last mile delivery operations. It is also in plans to leverage the data of MaymyIndia for a better address verification, facility mapping, theft minimization and real time shipment tacking.
Flipkart has made investments in other ventures related to supply chain such as QikPod and Zinka, but MapmyIndia is the largest investment made after the acquisition of the fashion portal Myntra.
