Looks like Kalyan Krishnamurthy is systematically investing in growth stage or segment leader startups to make safe bets and gain assured money.
Generally, angel investors bet on early stage startups that have potential to grow, scale and partake the risk along with the co-founders. That is not the case with Krishnamurthy, who makes strategic investments banking on his brand value.
Let’s look at the history of his investments to understand this statement. Recently, Entrackr broke his minor Rs 1.6 crore investment in UrbanClap, that is a market leader in home service marketplace segment.
Cure.fit and NestAway, two of his other investments enjoy the same position in their respective segments.
Moglix, a B2B industrial tool supplier, also saw Krishnamurthy investing in the firm in February this year, two months after the Series C round raised in December 2018 .
In Unacademy’s filings with MCA uploaded yesterday, Krishnamurthy has invested Rs 2.12 crore after which the company’s post-money valuation reached $378.5 million (Rs 2,628.73 crore). This is a significant increase in valuation from when the company had last raised a $21 million Series C round.
At that time, the company’s valuation was lesser than $100 million.
Meanwhile, a TechCircle report mentioned that Krishnamurthy had also put in an undisclosed sum in Unacademy’s Series A round.
If Kalyan Krishnamurthy exits tomorrow itself, it is assured that he will make huge gains. And this is the fact around all of these aforementioned investments.
If we look at another fact, some of this minimal amount is invested at a time when the company doesn’t really need any new investor, but it might be the brand value of being a Flipkart CEO that is attached to Krishnamurthy that makes these shares accessible to him.
Sometimes, the investments even take place as a down round like in the case of UrbanClap.
This points out to a very interesting trend in investments by KK, the man who joined Flipkart through Tiger Global Management and is now running the show under Walmart after the two founders left the table.
Let’s see who is next in line to be awarded another investment from the respectable Flipkart CEO.
