SoftBank owns largest chunk of Flipkart, co-founders' stakes fall to 10.7%

A lot has changed for India’s e-commerce behemoth Flipkart in the past 8-10 months as new investors taking prominent space in the organisation. After $2.6 billion investment, SoftBank has emerged as the largest stakeholder in the company.

In August last year, Flipkart closed the deal with SoftBank, which bought the stake worth at least $2.6 billion. Post pouring in a massive round, SoftBank owns about 21 per cent of Kalyan Krishnamurthy-led company.

The New York-based Tiger Global, one of the major backers of Flipkart, witnessed its shareholding reduced from 33.6 per cent to 20.5 per cent, reports ET.

The Japanese conglomerate invested roughly $1.4 billion directly in the e-commerce company. Besides, it bought shares worth $1.2-1.4 billion from Tiger Global Management, Accel Partners, IDG Ventures and Flipkart co-founders Sachin and Binny Bansal, including existing and former employees.

Source : ET

The Indian e-commerce platform remained in the news on last weekend for its soaring losses which stood at Rs 8,771.4 crore in FY 2017.

The increased losses were the result of the fall in valuation when the company raised capital led by Tencent at a much lower valuation of $11.6 billion in April 2017. The Chinese Internet conglomerate holds around 6 per cent stake in the company.

In October, in another deal, San Jose-based e-commerce company eBay Inc secured a 5.4 per cent stake in Flipkart. The development occurred after eBay sold its Indian business to Flipkart for $211 million and made an investment of $514 million into Flipkart.

When the investment was flowing in the company via various deals, Flipkart co-founders also witnessed a drop in their stakes.

Group CEO Binny Bansal shareholding fell from from 7.6 per cent to 5.2 percent, when he sold shares worth $30-35 million in the secondary buyback led by SoftBank last year.

The other co-founder Sachin Bansal, however, did not sell any shares during the buyback, but saw his stake getting diluted to 5.5 per cent. Besides Accel Partners, Naspers also witnessed a fall in its stakes in the company.