Flipkart acquires stake in MapmyIndia to improve delivery ops

Bengaluru, Dec 3: Online commerce giant Flipkart has acquired a strategic minority stake in navigation and tracking solutions provider MapmyIndia to strengthen its supply chain management.

With Flipkart's investment, MapmyIndia's early financial investors, Nexus Venture Partners and Lightbox Ventures, would exit the company.

However, details of the transaction were not disclosed. The deal will help Flipkart in its strategy to strengthen supply chain through technology as it will license map data and location technologies from MapmyIndia.

MapmyIndia would continue to independently serve all consumers and enterprises across all industries with its full range of products and solutions.

This will extend a new layer of capability to Flipkart's existing supply chain and logistics operations, making customer experience timely and hassle free, Flipkart said in a statement.

"With this strategic investment, we are taking another concrete step towards transforming the supply chain ecosystem in India, making technology and information the driver of our supply chain and logistics solutions," Flipkart COO and Co-founder Binny Bansal said.

In future, the companies will collaborate on other services that are likely to be introduced like better address verification, real-time shipment tracking, facility mapping and theft minimisation via geo-fencing.

MapmyIndia Managing Director and Co-founder Rakesh Verma said the company is "thrilled" to welcome Flipkart as a strategic minority investor and looked forward to sharing its domain expertise with them.

MapmyIndia provides map data and APIs, GPS navigation, tracking, location apps and GIS solutions.

PTI