E-commerce marketplace Flipkart has raised $1 billion in fresh funding from China-based Internet firm Tencent with participation from Microsoft, according to this Business Standard report. The report quoted unnamed sources who told the publication that the new round of funding was based on a valuation of $11 billion, down significantly from the previous valuation of $15 billion. The company has not disclosed the investment publicly; In a statement to MediaNama's emailed queries, a spokesperson from Flipkart responded saying "as a company policy, we do not comment on market speculations." Apart from this, Flipkart is also in talks with e-commerce major eBay for a potential merger deal involving its India operations; the company is also looking to raise an additional $500 million investment from eBay, the report added. Note that Flipkart’s rival Snapdeal had earlier sold a minority stake to eBay for an undisclosed amount in 2013. In August 2015 eBay sold a partial stake in Snapdeal to focus on its India operations. Flipkart financials and funding The speculated funding from Tencent and Microsoft also comes at a time when Flipkart is going through a rather rough time. It has seen some major rejigs on it executive level management with the appointment of Tiger Global’s Kalyan Krishnamuthy as new CEO, who replaced co-founder and CEO Binny Bansal. In its India operations, Flipkart posted losses of Rs 5,223 during FY16, which is the highest comparing to the three e-commerce companies (Snapdeal and Amazon) that operate in the country, according to this Moneycontrol report. If the…
