April 16 2021: Flipkart, one of the major e-commerce brands in India, owned by US supermarket giant, Walmart, has acquired 100 percent of online travel agency, Cleartrip in a deal said to be worth $ 40 million.
It plans to treat the service as a standalone brand, that will be continue to be led by Cleartip CEO and co-founder Stuart Crighton. All employees are being retained.
Founded in 2006, Cleartrip was one of the first big travel aggregators. In 2018, Cleartrip integrated with Amazon's voice assistant, to let users book their flights and hotels using voice. The company again partnered with Amazon in May 2019, to enable users to pay for bookings using Amazon Pay.
This is not Flipkart's first foray into the travel space: In 2018, the company partnered with MakeMyTrip to enable travel bookings on its platform and in August 2019, Flipkart signed a deal with Gurugram-based Ixigo.