Backed by YL Ventures as a leading investor since its inception in 2010, the startup will be one of Flipkart’s excellence centres to do cutting-edge data science work. Upstream Chief Executive Amos Peleg said Flipkart’s choice to have presence in Israel through the acquisition was a vote of confidence in his team, technology and domain expertise. “We share the same passion for technology and vision for the contribution of data science in future and success of online retail as Flipkart,” said Peleg.

Though Flipkart has been developing machine learning algorithms to improve the selection and pricing parametres for sellers and helped thousands of small and medium businesses get online, it is betting on Upstream providing it with automated pricing and planning better selection.

“Upstream’s expertise will be a huge addition for us and our in-house AI capabilities, which will share actionable insights with sellers to help them make informed decisions on products and their pricing,” added Flipkart’s Marketplace Head Anil Goteti. The 11-year-old e-shopping portal claims to have over a lakh sellers and offers a whopping 80 million products across 80 categories, including smartphones, books, media, consumer electronics, furniture, fashion and lifestyle.