Can Flipkart beat a mile a minute? As the road to D-Street neared its end, the ecommerce giant has flicked into quick commerce, rolling out Minutes. The question now staring at its American parent Walmart is how much cash burn will it endure as a late entrant in a party of seasoned players.

Digital payments major PhonePe, another Walmart-run entity, had to fork out a fortune for a reverse flip to India ahead of its public float next year.

The US retail behemoth is in no mood to sit on its two big-ticket acquisitions. Walmart had spent $16 Bn when it picked up 77% stake in Flipkart in 2018 and subsequently raised it to 80%. The entire block is worth around $30 Bn today, while its 70% holding in PhonePe is pegged at $6-7 Bn.

Share sales in the two companies sometime in 2026 will help Walmart map its way out, at least partially.

PhonePe had to cough up INR 8,000 Cr in taxes when it moved its domicile back to India from Singapore in January 2023. Flipkart, which just got its board approving a reverse flip to India, will have to shell out more.

In the run-up to the IPO, the Walmart management sounded upbeat on Flipkart. “We invested a little bit more in Flipkart this year, which contributed to a little bit of pressure on its bottomline, but the topline has been doing really well,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey said at the 2025 Oppenheimer Consumer Growth and E-Commerce Conference on June 10.

Flipkart’s marketplace revenues increased 21% on-year in FY24 to INR 17,907 Cr and its losses shrank 41% to INR 2,358 Cr. In comparison, rival Amazon recorded a 14% rise in revenue to INR 25,406 Cr and INR 3,649 Cr losses. Smaller horizontal ecommerce player Meesho, which has been quickly eating into Flipkart’s market share, saw its topline zoom 33% to INR 7,615 Cr and losses reduce by 82% to INR 305 Cr.

“What is interesting here is that unlike Meesho, which is also heading for an IPO, Flipkart’s scale is much higher and the losses only increased after Walmart acquired it majorly because of aggressive expansion into Tier-II and III towns, setting up large warehouses, having in-house logistics, and acquisition of nearly a dozen companies,” argued a former Flipkart CXO who has worked with CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy.

“At this juncture, if Flipkart aims to cut losses (further), it has to shut down some acquired companies that aren’t working and at the same time maintain its leading position in the core commerce business. It’s a double-edged sword. Unlike a few years ago, when Kalyan had to deal with just Amazon, today he has Meesho and not to forget Blinkit, Instamart and Zepto eating away the ecommerce share.”

And, Flipkart could never afford to lose its ecommerce revenues. It jostled into the speed delivery segment with the launch of Flipkart Minutes last August.

That’s when the game of balance was kicked off in India’s one of the oldest ecommerce startups on the field since 2007.

Was The Time Right For Minutes?

Minutes gatecrashed into a blazing market of 10-minute deliveries to save its revenues from the deep-pocket quick commerce players who were expanding their ambit from groceries to gadgets and beyond.

The move was forced, yet it struck the right chord with its parent, as the Donald Trump administration pushed India to give US retailers like Walmart and Amazon full access to its $125 Bn ecommerce market as part of a bilateral trade deal negotiations. The current regulations allow the US companies to run a........

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