In May last year, co-founder and chief executive officer of India's leading online retailer Flipkart.com, Sachin Bansal, called Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba Group Holding Limited BABA a role model. And it seems like he was very serious about it.

According to Business Standard, Flipkart is eyeing an international listing with Nasdaq emerging as the favored destination. According to Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst of Greyhound Research, the successful listing of Chinese e-commerce major Alibaba has encouraged large Indian e-commerce players to tread the same path.

Why NASDAQ?

Flipkart does not turn a profit yet and is presently chasing revenues. Indian rules do not allow a non-profitable company to go public and thus an Indian IPO in the next 12 months does not look to be in the offing.

According to Harish H V, partner at Grant Thornton, Nasdaq is the preferred choice as it is known for listing technology companies that have not made money and are not profitable yet.

"It is the growth story, not the profit story, that investors eye in the US,'' says Yugal Joshi, practice director at Everest Group.

Nasdaq is known for listing companies with "solid history" and "top-notch management". And Flipkart seems to be building a management to reckon with.

The latest addition to its management team include the likes of former Google executive Punit Soni as chief product officer, ex- McKinsey director Saikiran Krishnamurthy as chief operating officer (COO) of its commerce platform and former Tata Communications finance chief Sanjay Baweja as chief financial officer.

Flipkart also seems to be working on its finance. If recent media reports are to be believed, Flipkart has been cutting costs extensively to prepare for an IPO.

Meanwhile, there are also rumors that Flipkart might consider Singapore as listing norms in that country aren't as strict as in many others.

In The End

In the last few years, Flipkart has frequently been in the news for raising funds. Last year alone, it raised a whopping $2 billion. Established in 2007, the company has raised about $3 billion from well-known investors including Tiger Global, Naspers and Accel Partners.

According to an article in Forbes, leading global investment banks are pursuing Flipkart as it contemplates a Wall Street IPO next year. It says that “Multiple sources confirmed that investment bankers from Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JP Morgan have been visiting Bangalore, Flipkart’s base, for the past three months to present their credentials, engage with the company and build relationships.”

Flipkart has declined to comment on that.

According to Bansal, Flipkart wants to emulate Alibaba in going beyond e-commerce to build associated businesses like logistics, Internet payment gateways and mobile shopping solutions. Only time will really tell if it is able to follow Alibaba’s footsteps and achieve a record breaking IPO.

Also, if Flipkart does go in for a Nasdaq listing, it will be interesting to see if it fares better than the other e-commerce giants listed in the stock market, like Amazon AMZN and eBay EBAY.

Investors looking for exposure to India can instead consider MakeMyTrip Ltd. MMYT, a Nasdaq-listed Indian company with a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

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