Presidents go to war and companies buy others when the news cycle turns against them. In the case of Flipkart and Jabong, though, it's an aggregation of bad news that should perhaps change for a while, as the world celebrates Indian ecommerce's most fashionable marriage: via its own fashion business Myntra, Flipkart has acquired fashion commerce company Jabong for as little as $70 million in cash. Rocket Internet has sold Jabong via its fashion commerce conglomerate Global Fashion Group (GFG), and the low valuation hints at a desperation to wash its hands off the entire business. This ends months of speculation about the two companies, but apart from the fact that the deal that has taken place, there is little else that they have added: will they retain their separate identities, as Jabong and Myntra? How much was Jabong bought for? Only some data points have been shared: that the two have a combined monthly active user base of 15 million; Jabong has 1500 brands, and over a thousand sellers. Earlier the Economic Times had reported that Jabong's asking price was between $250-300 million, and the company had been in talks with Snapdeal, Aditya Birla Group-backed abof.com (what a terrible name), and even Amazon. But is everything cool? 1. Valuations: Flipkart's bad news, is frankly, irrelevant and far too many pageviews have been generated for it: Its valuation has been marked down, down, down this past year, but the true valuation will only be determined by the next buyer. Valuation lies in the eyes of…
