Ahead of festive season, Walmart starts purchasing Flipkart shares from current, former staff; all details here

Looks like this upcoming festive season, it won’t be just Amazon and Flipkart battling with each other in order to lure customers with cheap offers and many top deals. Every festival in India opens a floodgate of discounts, cashback, buybacks and many more deals. However, this time, Amazon will face new competition and it would be in the form of US-based offline retail chain operator Walmart, which will make all the calls under Flipkart. With the latest news circulating, it has been revealed that Walmart has began purchasing Flipkart shares from current and former staff. 

According to several employees who were informed of the offer through emails from the management of Flipkart, the US-based Walmart, which acquired Flipkart for $16 billion in May, will purchase the shares at $126-128 apiece, reported in Livemint. 

Reportedly, as part of the employee stock option (ESOP) buyback plan, former employees will be able to cash out only 30% of their shares. They will have to hold on to the remainder of their holdings for an undisclosed period, the email showed. Current employees can, however, cash out half of their stock holdings immediately, and a quarter a year later.

It has been revealed that Walmart has set September 28 as its deadline for completing the buyback process. 
 
In the month of May this year, Walmart agreed to acquire a 77% interest in Flipkart Group. Walmart, which failed to make an entry in India in offline retail space with any kind of success, can now sell its products online to 1.3 billion population of the country. 

Post the acquisition, Walmart is expected to expand its online retail business here.

The deal will also see some of the biggest investors in Flipkart offloading their stakes, including Softbank, in the country's largest e-commerce company. While Tiger Global Management and Naspers Ltd will also follow suit in saying goodbye to Flipkart. 

Also Sachin Bansal who is a co-founder and CEO of Flipkart, will exit by selling entire 5.5% stake to Walmart.