Call it a love triangle. According to a new report, Amazon is interested in buying Flipkart, its arch rival in India. Amazon, whose CEO Jeff Bezos is world's richest man, has apparently held exploratory talks to buy Flipkart. But Flipkart doesn't seem to interested in the offer. The Indian e-commerce site is hoping to get into a partnership with Walmart that may see the US retail giant acquiring majority stake in Flipkart.

The Mint, a business newspaper, reports that Amazon may spend as much as $20 billion to acquire Flipkart. But then Walmart is reportedly in talks with Flipkart to buy 55 per cent of its shares, hoping to get into the e-commerce space in India, one of the world's most populous markets. The move will ensure that Walmart doesn't lose to Amazon in India the way it lost to it in the US.

The report notes that Walmart will buy a majority stake through a mix of primary and secondary share purchases in a deal that could value Flipkart at $21 billion. Flipkart investors are also planning to sell all of their shares in the Flipkart-Walmart deal.

People working close to the matter have said that the deal with Walmart has higher chances to go through. However, the Mint in February had reported that the SoftBank group, which is the largest investor in Flipkart, is against the deal. As per the report, SoftBank sees itself as a long-term investor in the company and therefore does not want to shell out money for this so early.

Founded by former Amazon employees Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007, Flipkart has nearly 40 per cent share in India's online retail, ahead of Amazon. The Walmart-Flipkart deal may also help Flipkart stand up against its biggest rival Amazon that plans to invest $5 million in India to expand services here.

Flipkart, according to the report, has raised $6 billion so far. The company, last year in August raised $2.5 billion from Japanese conglomerate Softbank Vision Fund making Softbank the largest investor in Flipkart.

Not just Softbank, Walmart and Amazon, Google has also expressed its interest to invest in Flipkart. A FactorDaily report claims that talks are in the exploratory stage for this deal. The deal, if it goes through, will value Flipkart somewhere around $10 to $15 billion.