In a bid to expand their capabilities in the mobile service domain, online retailer Flipkart has acquired mobiles and IT repair services company F1 Info Solutions, said the company on Tuesday.
F1 Info Solutions, which has a pan-India presence of owned and franchised centres, will be a part of Jeeves, Flipkart’s company that is a third-party service provider for large and small appliances, furniture. “We wanted to expand our service capabilities into the mobiles service domain given how significant mobile sales are on the Flipkart platform,” said Abhijit Upadhye, head of Jeeves. “We will look at an end-to-end refurbishing of the phone and potentially selling it in the second-hand market.”
ET had recently reported that Flipkart plans to use the eBay India platform to sell second-hand and refurbished products including smartphones. This acquisition ties-in with their strategy of collecting secondhand products through the company’s buyback guarantee and exchange offers and repair them in order to make it re-sellable.
“This acquisition will help us with a strategic capability that we will build over a period of time for products that we receive through all the assured buybacks and exchange offers and given that mobile repair is not an easy capability to build, this acquisition will accelerate our entire journey into the mobile space in a significant way,” added Upadhye.
Established in 2012, F1 Info Solutions is a neutral service provider with a distributed repair service network of around 158 centers in 135 cities.
Shammi Moza, the company’s CEO will join Flipkart as a senior director as part of the deal, and will continue to hold responsibility for the business while reporting to Upadhye. As part of this acquisition, Flipkart customers would be able to walk into the authorised service centres to get their phones repaired within the warranty period.
