Flipkarts Binny Bansal says next two years will be learning period for him in grocery business

Flipkart Group CEO Binny Bansal said that there is a clear meeting of minds with US retail giant Walmart, in a way that the US company wants Indian e-commerce firm to focus on expanding the market and signing on more new customers, said a LiveMint report. It may be noted that on 9 May, Walmart had agreed to pay $16 billion for a 77% stake in Flipkart. The deal was reportedly structured in a way so as to allow for a public listing of Flipkart in a few years’ time. Analysts have cast doubts about an IPO happening any time soon, given Flipkart’s large losses, said the LiveMint report.

What Flipkart co-founder and group CEO Binny Bansal, Walmart chief operating officer Judith McKenna, Walmart India head Krish Iyer and Walmart executive vice president Dirk Van den Berghe told reporters at Walmart’s headquarters at Bentonville in the US state of Arkansas about the way ahead for Flipkart has been described by the newspaper in edited excerpts. But this report takes what Binny Bansal reportedly said.

When asked about Binny Bansal to work for somone else after running Flipkart for more than 10 years, he said reportedly said that "nothing is changing on that front. Flipkart has been a board-run company and with Walmart coming in as an investor the operating structure doesn’t change and Flipkart will still be a board-run company. Members of the board will change a little bit but I will continue to report to the board."

And when he was asked what are the immediate synergies between Walmart and Flipkart, he reportedly said that "We’ll be looking at Indian sellers selling on different Walmart properties across the globe. Not just bringing stuff to India, but also taking stuff to the world."

On being asked about what are Flipkart’s plans for the grocery business?, the Flipkart Group CEO said, "We started grocery in Bengaluru a few months back. Launching a category takes a lot of effort with building a supply chain, getting vendors on board... we started thinking about how we wanted to do grocery two years back."

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"It’s still an experiment but we’re really excited about the results. The plan is to launch it in another four cities over the next two or three quarters. What we’ve learnt is that every city is going to be very different. The next two years are going to be a learning period for us in grocery and then we will look to scale it after 2020," he was quoted as saying by the LiveMint report.