Abstract

This case discusses the problems faced by leading Indian e-tailer Flipkart Online Services Private Limited (Flipkart) in the Indian e-commerce market. Faced with a fund crunch, heavy losses, tough competition, a management churn at the top, and tougher government regulations, Flipkart found itself in the middle of a storm with the imminent possibility of it ceding the top slot to rival Amazon in the online retail market in India. The company’s new CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy (Krishnamurthy) faces an uphill challenge in improving Flipkart’s flagging sales growth, stemming market share losses to Amazon, and sustaining its dominant position in the Indian e-commerce space.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the problems faced by Flipkart in India.
• Evaluate the rapidly changing Indian e-commerce trends and its effect on Flipkart.
• Analyze the future challenges of Flipkart.
• Explore future strategies that Flipkart’s CEO can adopt to ride the company out of trouble.

Keywords

Flipkart, Crisis, e-commerce, Devaluation, Competition, Business strategy, Employee turnover, Leadership issues