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Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

bloomberg.com

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Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#91

Post by GW150914 »

vpribish wrote: post #22
tinyhouse wrote: post #13

The title says Walmart beats Amazon in a battle. Then in the article it says: "Flipkart’s board ultimately decided a deal with Walmart is more likely to win regulatory approval because Amazon is the No. 2 e-commerce operator in India behind Flipkart and its primary competitor. Amazon is out of the running unless Walmart hits unforeseen trouble." Doesn't sound like a battle to me.

The more I read from Bloomberg the less I respect them.

It’s incredible that they think this kind of steaming “content” is worth $40 a month!

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#92

Post by mr_toad »

bradhe wrote: post #8

What if Walmart and Google actually teamed up? Google technology powering Walmart's supply chain? I wonder how competitive they'd end up actually being vs Amazon.

> What if Walmart and Google actually teamed up?

Anti-trust people would be all over that.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#93

Post by wpietri »

throwaway6497 wrote: post #5

Walmart was forced to pay $15 Billion by Amazon, I think. Amazon-India is already a force to reckon with in India. They have a ton of customer love in India, and they are killing it. There is no reason for them to buy Flipkart. They did the required to hurt their competitor by feigning interest. Bezos is a master at deception. Well played, Bezos and Flipkart investors. Stingy Walmart has to cough up more money.

And I'd add that a high price hurts Walmart more than Amazon. Amazon's market cap is 3x Walmart's. Amazon has $31 billion in cash and short-term investments; Walmart has about $7 billion. On top of this, presumably Walmart will be investing heavily in expansion.

I think Walmart's stinginess is also an important point here. At this price, plus the additional money they put in, a good ROI gets harder. Bezos has never really cared about short-term ROI, but I wonder if Walmart will be inclined to be impatient or under-invest later because of the high price now.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#94

Post by ryanmarsh »

meko wrote: post #70
piyush_soni wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I think the reason was the amazing customer service at Amazon, and mostly the effective price on Amazon was always lower.

Until they become a monopoly and all that good customer service dissolves down the drain. It's already happening in the US.

Thank god I haven’t had that happen yet. I’ve had Amazon give above-and-beyond customer service twice recently. They gave me discounts and credits I wasn’t even asking for. I hope it doesn’t go down the drain but I suppose at some point it’s bound to happen.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#95

Post by ekianjo »

meko wrote: post #70
piyush_soni wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I think the reason was the amazing customer service at Amazon, and mostly the effective price on Amazon was always lower.

Until they become a monopoly and all that good customer service dissolves down the drain. It's already happening in the US.

we keep hearing this yet there is hardly good evidence for this. And if if occurs then more opportiunities open for their competitors.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#96

Post by beiller »

ekianjo wrote: post #95
meko wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until they become a monopoly and all that good customer service dissolves down the drain. It's already happening in the US.

we keep hearing this yet there is hardly good evidence for this. And if if occurs then more opportiunities open for their competitors.

How about cable companies? Some argue Amazon is subsidized in the same way, by having USPS shipping cheaply to the outskirts.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#97

Post by adventured »

joering2 wrote: post #84

Look at it from other angle: Amazon just made Walmart spent 15B, while imagine what Amazon can do with so much cash, considering their past performance. Is there anything they (as a company) failed ?

Amazon has failed at a lot of things.

Amazon search, A9, was originally meant to take on Google back in 2003 as a comprehensive search solution. It failed spectacularly at that.

The Amazon phone, a shot at Apple's massive profits. A total failure.

Amazon attempted to take on eBay in auctions, they failed.

Amazon attempted to take on Craigslist in classified ads, another failure.

Amazon has been attempting to figure out a way to dominate the music category for 15+ years, they've repeatedly failed. They're very far behind Apple and Spotify when it comes to stand-alone music services.

Amazon's local daily deals service, Amazon Local, failed (shut-down in 2015). They also burned $175m on LivingSocial during the Groupon mania years as part of that overall sector effort.

They attempted a competing mapping service to Google Maps, that ended up being a mediocre product (with a few technical innovations) that nobody used. They quickly discovered how difficult and expensive it is to build a competing product to Google Maps.

Amazon failed with travel, attempting to go after Priceline's profits, they shut down Amazon Destinations in 2015.

They failed with Local Register, which was some kind of mediocre shot at Square's market.

Amazon essentially takes shots at anything that pops up and demonstrates an ability to make money. They fail overwhelmingly, and then very rarely they get a homerun like AWS which pays for it all many times over.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#98

Post by throwaway6498 »

I work for Flipkart and I am quite happy that it's Walmart who we are going to work with instead of Amazon.

As an engineer, Walmart Labs (their research division in Bangalore) is a much better fit to Flipkart's culture than Amazon.

The engineering talent pool in Walmart Labs and Flipkart are quite similar. In Bangalore, there are a handful of companies like Google, Amazon, Walmart Labs, Flipkart, and LinkedIn who can really pay the big bucks necessary to hire the topmost talent from India.

Among these, Google has a laid back culture and does not really excel in retail. Amazon has a stressful culture and I know plenty of people who could not take the stress and long hours of working in Amazon beyond a year and moved to one of the other four companies.

Walmart Labs, on the other hand, is quite similar to us. I think there will be a good exchange of ideas and skills between the two companies.

By the way, since a lot of people are commenting here that Amazon is killing it and they are number 1. That's true. But that's not a very relevant metric. For the owners and employees of a company like Flipkart, it is not all about being number 1. It is more about being able to make substantial profit and pay the employees well enough to keep competing with the likes of Google, Amazon, and Walmart Labs in order to hire the topmost talent.

Granted Flipkart is not doing very well in making good profits right now but we are trying to make the areas where Amazon is weak at as our strengths. For example, Amazon at this time does not ship large products (things that are bigger than what you can hold in a hand) to small towns and villages. We are trying to excel in that and it has helped us survive so far. With us becoming teams with Walmart Labs, I am hoping we will do even better.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#99

Post by gnufied »

mars4rp wrote: post #41
sandGorgon wrote: post #37

India is now poised to be the only country in the world with a two way fight between Amazon and Alibaba. Three way if you consider Walmart.

This is crazy! As we all know, online retailers are killing local businesses, in US it might make sense because the profit goes to another sector of economy, Amazon is going to hire more developers and invest in other products that in long run might not be total lose for the whole economy! what a country like India is going to gain by letting American and Chinese companies destroy her local businesses and take the pr…

Amazon.in in India is a Marketplace. Unlike US, Amazon does not sell anything directly to consumers. You will see "Full-filled by Amazon". This in fact presents great opportunity to local and far flung businesses who did not had access to market.

The foreign direct investment in retail sector is not all open in India. Also as far as I know, most companies can't move huge amount of money to mainland easily. Double taxation is one thing but there are other problems that forces companies to invest locally.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#100

Post by throwaway6498 »

emeerson wrote: post #14
bradhe wrote: post #8

What if Walmart and Google actually teamed up? Google technology powering Walmart's supply chain? I wonder how competitive they'd end up actually being vs Amazon.

It would take Googlmart 5+ years to play catch up if not longer. Google's too disorganized and they don't have any supply chain tech built up. Amazon has years of supply chain infrastructure (both software, physical systems and organization) including supply/demand forecasting models and warehouse operational investment (Kiva systems, etc...). The only differentiation that Google adds to Walmart is: - Top-talent engi…

In Bangalore, companies like Google, Amazon, Walmart Labs, Flipkart, Directi, and LinkedIn all attract the same talent pool.

All of these companies can pay either as much as Google or more than Google to attract the topmost talent pool. In fact, many of the engineers in these companies frequently hop from one company to another between these. Of these, Amazon has the highest attrition rate due to stressful working conditions and they are sooner to leave to another company than the others.

Walmart Labs in Bangalore has a talent pool that is running a million node cluster based on OpenStack completely in house with zero dependency on something like AWS (of course!) or GCP. That's quite a feat and I think it will help Flipkart a great deal if Walmart Labs shares some of this incredible talent and resources they have built within their company.

Disclaimer: I work for Flipkart.

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