Flipkart achieves $1 billion GMV sales a year before projection

Poster boy of Indian eCommerce space Flipkart has hit the $1 billion gross merchandising value (GMV) sales, which it had projected to achieve somewhere in 2015. Backed by Venture capital firms like Naspers, Tiger Global Dragoneer Investment Group and Morgan Stanley among others Flipkart growth has been phenomenal over the years.“Today, we are really proud and excited to announce that we have hit a run rate of $1 billion GMV one year before our target,” said Sachin Bansal, CEO and Co-founder Flipkart. In March last year, the company had announced that by 2015 it plans to achieve $1 billion figure.

In 2013 the Bangalore-based company announced $360 million funding from multiple investors and launched its in-house payment gateway Payzippy. Founded in 2009 Flipkart launched marketplace which has a little over 1,000 sellers at present.

“The feat signifies that we have grown 100X in the last three years – and it reinforces our position as the leader in the Indian e-commerce industry,” adds Sachin.

The news of hitting $1 billion sales comes on the heels of rival Snapdeal's recent announcement of $133 million round led by eBay and Bangalore-based Myntra's $50 million investment led by Premji Invest along with existing investors Accel Partners and Tiger Global.

This achievement by Flipkart would put pressure on other marketplaces which are adopting different strategies to grab a bigger slice of the growing market. Last month Snapdeal forayed into services e-commerce space with online learning and education category.

Horizontal marketplace play in e-commerce appears to be in an interesting phase in India as top players are hitting the headlines with new investments, strategies and feats. Watch our video with co-founder Binny Bansal from TechSparks 2013: