Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce site, agreed to a $15 billion investment by Walmart this past week, giving the U.S.-based retailer a 75% ownership in Flipkart and valuing the e-commerce site at around $20 billion. The move gets Walmart a foothold in one of the fastest growing e-commerce markets in the world today, as the world’s largest retailer struggles to compete with online rival Amazon for market share in the burgeoning e-commerce space.
Walmart has struggled in China, another growing Asian market, even though it was one of the first international companies to open a major presence starting in 1996, over two decades ago. It has been hobbled by an anti-foreign regulatory environment implemented by the communist government, which favors local and home-grown companies.
