MUMBAI, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Global retailer Walmart is likely to announce its much-anticipated deal to buy a 70 to 75 percent controlling stake in Indian e-commerce player Flipkart on Wednesday.
The deal, valued at 15 billion U.S. dollars, is likely to be Walmart's biggest acquisition of a business. Alphabet, Google's parent company, will get roughly 15 percent stake of about 3 billion U.S. dollars.
Sachin and Binny Bansal, both former Amazon employees, founded Flipkart in 2007, and like their U.S. rival, began by selling books. The Flipkart Group now includes fashion portals Myntra-Jabong, payments unit PhonePe and logistics firm Ekart.
Walmart is expected to get three board seats at Flipkart and will also have a say in the appointments of the group's finance, legal and compliance heads. Binny Bansal will remain in his current role after the deal, while Sachin Bansal will completely exit the company and mostly sell his 5.2 percent stake in it.
Flipkart will hold a townhall for employees on Friday, with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon likely to attend, one of the sources said. Other top Walmart executives will also be in India for the announcement.
In a letter to Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu, the Confederation of All India Traders or CAIT said that the deal should not be allowed till India finalises a policy for the e-commerce sector.
"Since there is no policy or rule for e-commerce as of now, such deals will run contrary to the interests of India's retail trade... E-commerce business is already gripped with predatory pricing, loss of funding. The scenario after the Walmart-Flipkart deal will be worse than ever for both offline and online traders," Praveen Khandelwal, national general secretary of CAIT said in a letter dated May 7.
He added that the deal would further create an uneven level-playing field, giving rise to unhealthy competition where traders -- both online and offline -- would not be able to compete.
The traders' body further demanded that the government make it mandatory that such deals take place only when 75 percent of the sellers on an e-platform give their assent since they would be the worst sufferers.
