eBay, the California-based online marketplace announced its decision to terminate its strategic partnership with Indian e-commerce Flipkart in an effort to relaunch eBay India with a differentiated offer to focus on cross-border trade, the company said in a statement released on Wednesday.
The announcement comes few hours after reports of the confirmation of the acquisition deal between Flipkart and US-based brick-and-mortar giant Walmart as eBay India sold its shares it bought last year during a funding round of $1.4 billion in partnership with Microsoft and Tencent where the online marketplace poured $500 million in the Indian e-commerce in return for shares. Yesterday, eBay sold all its remaining shares in Flipkart to the deep pocketed Walmart for $1.1 billion.
“Following the close of the transaction, we also will be ending our current strategic relationship with Flipkart, which includes unwinding our commercial agreements with Flipkart and terminating Flipkart’s license to use the eBay.in brand,” eBay said in a statement.
Last year, the San Jose-based multinational e-commerce corporation sold its Indian operations to Flipkart in return for shares worth $220 million at that time. When the acquisition of eBay.in was agreed, Flipkart announced that the platform would be used to facilitate cross-border trade, which meant giving Flipkart customers access to eBay’s wide inventory of products and Flipkart’s vendors access to eBay’s worldwide customer-base. However, the initiative never really took off.
“We plan to relaunch eBay India with a differentiated offer to focus initially on the cross-border trade opportunity, which we believe is significant. We believe there is huge growth potential for e-commerce in India and significant opportunity for multiple players to succeed in India’s diverse, domestic market,” it added.
It now seems that eBay is aiming to relaunch its business fiercely with cross-border selling without the collaboration of Flipkart.