Flipkart, Snapdeal’s positive numbers indicate business growth

While low consumer sentiment continues to put pressure on sales at offline and online firms, India’s leading ecommerce platform,Flipkart has seen a jump of 150 percent in unit sales so far in 2015, compared with the year-ago period, helped by addition of new categories and a wider logistics network. As per the presentation by Japan’s SoftBank Group, homegrown marketplace, Snapdeal reported an increase of 222 percent in gross merchandise value (GMV) in the April-June quarter.

The figures of these two ecommerce leaders signal a growth-path ahead however, experts are concerned about revenues of online companies, who are yet to book profits. Sales growth at most top online retailers slowed in the first quarter of this fiscal putting pressure on them to further increase discounts to generate sales. Higher the sales, the more the valuation to attract additional funding.

Media reports suggest that Flipkart’s valuation is expected to increase to about 15 billion dollars (over Rs 96,000 crores) from less than 2 billion dollars (over Rs 12,800 crores) at the beginning of 2014, while Snapdeal may be valued at 5 billion dollars (over Rs 32,000 crores) from less than 1 billion (over Rs 6,400 crores) 18 months ago.