Looks like Flipkart will soon be announcing launch of its own Marketplace. MCA company registration data shows that 2 company names have been approved and the company names clearly give out the kind of business they will be doing. The 2 companies are named “FLIPKART MARKETPLACE PRIVATE LIMITED” and “FLIPKART PAYMENT GATEWAY SERVICES PRIVATE LIMITED”.
Interestingly, both these companies have been approved by MCA in past fortnight itself. FMPL was approved yesterday (12th September 2012) and FPGSPL a few days earlier (31st August 2012). This news was first discussed by pluggd forum members.
Here is the snapshot of MCA Company data:
What does Flipkart plan?
Given the company names that have been registered with MCA, it is quite obvious what Flipkart is planning to launch in coming months.
I am guessing that Flipkart will launch a platform similar to buildabazar created by Infibeam, where retailers and product companies can come and create their own e-commerce site for selling their products. In all probability, Flipkart will promote these 3rd party products on its own platform which probably will be the biggest incentive for potential platform users given Flipkart’s popularity in India.
Launching its own payment gateway is also a logical step forward given the amount of transactions they do currently on their own site. And, with marketplace coming in, they will need a gateway on their own as well.
However, it also needs to be seen whether Flipkart will offer Payment Gateway services to merchants who will not be part of their platform. It looks like they will. Flipkart already has a domain name registered in their name – https://flipkartpayments.com/, which is already SSL enabled. It is interesting that Alexa shows quite a bit of traffic for this url already…
All in all, it is safe to assume that Flipkart will very soon (in couple of months or sooner) be announcing their own third-party marketplace platform and a payment gateway.
What’s your take?
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