"Future Group is looking to selling least 10% stake to the strongest global retailer," Kishore Biyani, Future Retail founder, told The Economic Times.

Though Biyani did not mention which retailer, the report quoting sources said Biyani has held early talks with Walmart and Amazon.

Yesterday, Walmart announced acquisition of 77% stake in Flipkart for about $16 billion in the largest e-commerce deal which will give the US retailer access to the Indian online market that is estimated to grow to $200 billion within a decade.

India has not given the overseas retailers to invest in multi-brand retail, however, in cases where a global retailer, such as Amazon, invested in a retail company through its investment arm where it picked up a 5% stake in Shoppers Stop, analysts explained to the paper.

A native company can dilute up to 49% stake to multiple foreign portfolio investors (FPI). “Our strategy had taken into account that something like this (the Walmart-Flipkart deal) could happen,” Biyani told the paper.

“We have to consider our position more carefully…we have a lead in this country…our use of technology has increased significantly,” the Future Group boss said, inclining towards explaining how he’s looking to shore up his company’s strength after India played host to the biggest e-commerce deal.

Biyani's take on the Walmart-Flipkart deal that, though the game in consumer durables and IT products can change, in groceries, Flipkart is still a fringe player and expects the deal to follow the lines of online to offline or O2O model.

First Published:May 10, 2018 11:36 AM IST