Mutual fund investor T Rowe Price cuts Flipkart valuation by 4pc to $9.9 bn

Two months after an aggressive 38 percent markdown in Flipkart’s valuation by Morgan Stanley, Mutual fund investor T Rowe Price has trimmed the valuation of India's largest e-commerce company Flipkart marginally by another 4 percent to about $9.9 billion, reports Economic Times.

The latest markdown pins the company’s per share value at USD 93.15 at the end of December quarter down from the September's USD 96.29 per share. This is a substantial decline from per share value of USD 142.24 in 2015 when the company was valued at USD 15.2 billion.

Notably, in November last year, Morgan Stanley lowered Flipkart’s valuation by 38 percent to $5.6 billion. Mutual funds Valic and Fidelity also marked down the value of their holdings in India’s most valuable startup by 11.3 percent and 3.2 percent respectively in the same month.

The latest markdown news is coming in when the Bangalore-based e-tailer has been on a lookout for a fresh round of funding.

Though Flipkart sees these markdowns as mere “theoretical exercise”, they could have a crucial impact on Walmart’s prospective investment into Flipkart, which multiple reports have claimed, could be to the tune of $1 billion.

Flipkart currently seems to be sailing through rough water from all sides. Along with a fierce battle with arch rival Amazon, the company is also grappling with changes in top management. Just after Tiger Global’s Kalyan Krishnamurthy took over as the new CEO, three top executives namely supply chain unit Ekart head Saikiran Krishnamurthy, product head Surojit Chatterjee and chief marketing officer Samardeep Subandh called it quits.