Walmart, e-commerce company Flipkart’s biggest shareholder, is set to infuse about $600 million in a new fund-raising for the startup, a Flipkart spokesperson has said. 

Flipkart is in talks to raise a total of $1 billion in fresh funds, according to a newspaper report, citing people with knowledge of the matter. 

New investors are also in talks to join the round, and the latest funding is likely to value the Indian company at a premium of about 5 to 10 per cent to its current valuation of $33 billion, the report adds. 

That would still be shy of the near-$38 billion valuation that the company hit in 2021. 

The US retail giant has been accelerating its growth in India since 2018, when it had bought a 77 per cent stake in Flipkart for about $16 billion, its biggest investment. Two years later, it committed to importing $10 billion of goods from India each year by 2027. 

Early this year, it increased its control in Flipkart by buying out hedge fund Tiger Global and venture capital firm Accel’s remaining stakes for $1.4 billion. It was not clear what Walmart’s stake was after the purchase. 

Flipkart has grown to become one of India’s top online marketplaces, focusing on small towns and cities, unlike rival Amazon, which has more of an urban bend. 

In 2022, Flipkart had pushed back its plans to go public to 2023 and internally raised its IPO valuation target by around a third to around $70 billion, two sources with direct knowledge of the plan have told the Reuters.