Indian Online Bookseller Flipkart is now valued at $1 billion

Indian online book sellers, Flipkart – are now valued at $1 billion!  The company was started in 2007 and their growth has been nothing less than spectacular!  Now they are raising $150 million in a PE round of funding from General Atlantic Partners.

Founded in 2007 by two IIT graduates, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, Flipkart was launched as an online book store for India. Started with just five people, it grew within two years, cracked the top 100 Indian sites and was credited for being India’s largest online bookseller with over 10 million titles on offer. Today they have ventured into mobile phones, gaming consoles, electronics, music and movies as well and have increased their workforce to more than 1,500 employees catering over a million customers. It has offices in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata. Last December, it acquired social book discovery tool weRead.com from Lulu Enterprises, a U.S.-based on-demand publishing firm.

It shows that there is still a lot of money to be earned in India if something is done right.