Flipkart India units post robust revenue growth amid losses

Two key units of Walmart-owned Flipkart’s India business—Flipkart India and Flipkart Internet—reported growth of 25% and 32% in revenue from operations in FY21, respectively, according to regulatory filings sourced from business intelligence platform Tofler. The first is the wholesale unit and the second is the marketplace arm.

Flipkart Internet’s operational revenue was Rs 7,840 crore, while its losses increased by 49% to Rs 2,881 crore. Flipkart India saw an increase of 25% in revenue from operations at Rs 42,941 crore, while losses reduced 22% to Rs 2,445 crore, the filings showed.

Ecommerce major Flipkart’s parent company is registered in Singapore and it operates in India through a number of units. Flipkart Internet generates revenue through various fees such as marketplace, payment gateway, shipping and other services. Flipkart also has other units for payments and logistics in India.


Revenue from operations includes the revenue generated through the company’s core business of selling goods and services while total revenue also includes components like interest income from fixed deposits and other investments.

Flipkart Internet generated over Rs 2,794 crore in revenue from marketplace services to sellers while the second biggest chunk came from logistics services at over Rs 2,445 crore. Interestingly, the advertising business generated about Rs 1,385.7 crore in revenue in FY21 compared with Rs 1,008.8 crore in FY20–a jump of more than 37%. The rest of the revenue from operations came from services such as collection, storage and others.

The marketplace’s total expenses rose to Rs 10,996.3 crore crore in FY21 from Rs 8,254.3 crore a year ago. Among its major expenses, employee benefits stood at Rs 3,163.4 crore compared with Rs 2,602.7 crore in the year earlier. It spent Rs 1,073.4 crore on advertising and promotions in FY21 compared with Rs 1,114.6 crore in FY20–a drop of around 4%.

For Flipkart India, of its total operational revenue, Rs 42,939.8 crore came from the sale of products while it spent Rs 47,629.9 crore on purchase of stocks (goods) during FY21 compared with Rs 37,636.7 crore in FY20, the filings showed.

The latest financials of Flipkart come at a time when its Singapore parent is mulling a potential IPO by calendar year 2022 or FY23, as reported by ET in September last year.

Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy told about the company’s plans to scale up verticals like grocery and hyperlocal deliveries along with its value-focused platform Shopsy in an interview to ET on Tuesday.

He said that Flipkart had witnessed a substantial pandemic-induced acceleration in consumer adoption last year and in 2020. It resulted in new users coming online to make ecommerce transactions while existing online shoppers were a lot more active on Flipkart group platforms, he said.

“They (existing shoppers) are transacting across multiple categories. Earlier, there were a bunch of users who would come and shop in a particular category but their basket size has now expanded,” he said. Krishnamurthy added this was a common thread across different sets of shoppers on Flipkart.

While the fast spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 is an evolving situation in India, the ecommerce industry is expected to continue growing as the pandemic might further accelerate digital adoption. According to estimates from business research and market intelligence firm PGA Labs, the ecommerce industry is estimated to be worth $60 billion by FY22 compared to $48 billion in FY21. “We expect retail ecommerce sales to climb a further 25%, to $75 billion in FY23, with growth in digital buyers,” Abhishek Maiti, director–competitive intelligence and consumer insights, PGA Labs, told ET in December.