Hong Kong/Mumbai: According to reliable sources, Walmart Inc is all set to buy a majority stake in Indian e-commerce player Flipkart by the end of June this year. The deal may become the US retail giant’s biggest ever online business acquisition.

As per the Reuters report last week, Walmart completed its due talks with Flipkart and had proposed to buy 51 per cent or more of the company for a price somewhere between USD 10 billion to USD 12 billion.

Any deal being fit with Flipkart would mean that Walmart’s battle with Amazon.com will have plus point in gaining a bigger share of India’s fledgeling e-commerce market. According to Morgan Stanley, the deal would be worth USD 200 billion in a decade. Some reports from the media suggest that Amazon too is exploring a possible counter deal offer for Flipkart.

As the talks which spread in the media were private, sources opted for anonymity.

Walmart would buy both new and existing shares of Flipkart. The new shares have expected the value of about at least USD 18 billion, the sources said. And the price for existing shares would have a value of at about USD12 billion, the source said.

SoftBank Group of Japan which has a stake of roughly one-fifth of Flipkart through its Vision Fund is not expected to sell off any of its shares due to the low price being offered for the existing shares, the source said.

Early investors such as Tiger Global, Accel and Naspers will likely sell their entire shares in Flipkart to Walmart if a deal is reached.

A deal is yet to be finalized between the two parties, Walmart and Flipkart and its investors are ongoing, according to one of the source.

Flipkart also has eBay, Tencent Holdings and Microsoft Corp as its investors.

Flipkart was not available to respond to a request for any comment, and a representative for Walmart in India too declined to comment while SoftBank said it does not comment on speculation.

What it means for Walmart to get a deal Flipkart is that it will enable to reach the vast India market. Walmart is one of the largest retailer superstores.

For years, Walmart tried to enter India but was confined to wholesale business due to the restrictions on foreign investment. As of now, it has 21 such stores in India.

In comparison, Amazon is very close to Flipkart, which controls about 40 percent of India’s online retail market, according to estimates by researcher Forrester.

The investors of Flipkart are very much concerned that any deal with Amazon would mean running into regulatory hurdles as a combination would have more than 70 percent of the country’s online retail market, one of the sources said.

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