Now It Looks Like Walmart Has Defeated Amazon in the War to Buy Flipkart

It’s increasingly looking like Walmart and its partners will beat Amazon to take over Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce giant.Bloomberg reported Friday that Flipkart’s board has approved the sale of a roughly 75% stake to the Walmart group, which also includes Google parent Alphabet. The report states that Japan’s SoftBank will also sell the group its stake, which is in excess of 20%. The deal would value Flipkart at around $20 billion.

A Flipkart takeover would be a huge coup for Walmart international business chief, Judith McKenna, who took the role a few months ago. While the U.S. giant’s international locations have been relatively underperforming compared to those at home—hence Walmart selling off its Asda chain in the U.K., for example—Flipkart offers the leading online retail experience in a market of 1.3 billion people.

If the Walmart deal goes through, it’s likely to step up price competition in India, where Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos last month claimed his e-commerce platform was the fastest-growing.