Leading Indian e-commerce firm Flipkart has acquired the Israeli technology-driven start-up Upstream Commerce in its pursuit of boosting its innovative offerings across the world. However, both the involved parties, did not reveal the amount of the deal.
Notably, the Walmart-owned e-retailer has been focussing on its technology network and acquiring small companies to beat Amazon. Last month, it acquired AI-led speech recognition start-up Liv.ai to boost its technology segment. The acquisition of India-based artificial intelligence start-up was to enhance its presence in Tier II & III cities with conversational e-commerce experience in regional languages.
Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Flipkart, CEO spoke on the acquisition and said that with the Upstream acquisition, the e-retailer will now have tech and talent presence across Asia, US, and Israel, the major international regions for innovation. “The team at Upstream Commerce is highly talented and as we welcome them to Flipkart we are also looking forward to making Israel one of our excellence centres for advanced data science work,” Kalyan said.
Furthermore, with the acquisition of Upstream Commerce, Flipkart is anticipating to offer benefit to the sellers on its platform, as it will provide them deeper insights into their product collection and pricing strategies. It has also announced that Upstream Commerce team will continue to operate out of their Israel office.
It is important to add here that Walmart recently bought a majority stake in Flipkart for a deal that was worth US $ 16 billion (the biggest in e-commerce sector) which provided the home-grown brand an infusion of Rs. 3,463 crores.
