Flipkart won't be aggressive on startup investment front: Binny Bansal

Corporations which have graduated from being a startup to behemoths are often making investments and drive consolidations in several niches. Flipkart and Paytm have been in forefront of acquiring startups and injecting capital in complementary businesses.

While Flipkart had acquired several entities including Letsbuy, Myntra, Jabong and eBay, it also made strategic investments in MapMyIndia, WeHive, NestAway and F7.

Of late, there have been some reports mentioning that Flipkart has kept a sizeable budget for making the investment in local as well as offshore startups. However, such plans seem to have changed as the company is putting brakes on its investment activity in startups.

Binny Bansal, the only co-founder with Flipkart, has announced the Bengaluru-based e-commerce marketplace will go slow in investing in startups.

As of now, the home-grown e-commerce player has been proactive in backing local startups peculiarly in non-Series A rounds. However, it won’t be participating in such rounds actively.

Meanwhile, Flipkart may consider those companies who proves to be strategic to its business.

Binny was speaking at an event organised by angel investing platform LetsVenture. He also revealed that Flipkart is not going to use the fund raised for making investments other than the company's strategic interest.

Previously, Flipkart had maintained that it would be investing about $25 million in Silicon Valley-based startups to focus on deep technology.

Apart from it, the co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny had invested in their personal capacity in several startups including Inshorts, Ather Energy, Unacademy and the now-shut SpoonJoy.

In January this year, the duo floated a new venture called Sabin Advisors. It was speculated that the co-founders might route all their investments through this new venture and look at other businesses over a period of time.

The current status of Sabin Advisors could not be ascertained.

Further, the announcement by Binny would raise a question over Flipkart future strategy and interest areas in India apart from e-commerce.

The development comes on the heels of Walmart selling $16 billion in bonds to finance Flipkart acquisition. The deal is currently under the consideration of the competition commission of India.

The development was reported by TOI.