Binny Bansal sells stake worth $76 Mn to Walmart

Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal continues to unload his Flipkart stake in multiple tranches. According to a Singapore ACRA filing dated November 27, Bansal has transferred 5,39,312 equity shares of Flipkart’s Singapore based holding entity ‘Flipkart Private Limited’ to Walmart. 

This transaction was worth between $75 -$80 million and was executed through Walmart’s Luxembourg-based SPV (special purpose vehicle) ~FIT Holdings SARL, which now holds about 81.6% of Flipkart. 

While Bansal’s share in the company will go down to 3.3%, Tiger Global and Tencent's shareholding will remain at 5% and 5.23% respectively.

Notably, Bansal had offloaded the same number of shares earlier this year in June as per media reports. He then held around 3.52% stake which has now been diluted further.

Ever since the acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart in August 2018, Bansal had already offloaded his shares in multiple tranches for an approximate consideration of $250 million, according to an industry estimate.  

Flipkart has been a poster boy of the Indian startup ecosystem for a long time and would remain for time immemorial. It ticks all the boxes that make it a success since the company created wealth for everyone — right from investors to employees and founders. 

At the time of the buyout by Walmart, Sachin and Binny (not related) made $1 billion each. While Sachin cashed out completely, Binny continued until November 2018 as the group CEO before resigning following personal misconduct. Since then, he has moved his base to Singapore and is slowing cashing out his stake in the e-commerce firm. 

Binny’s dilution of stake comes at a time when Binny is reportedly setting up a $400 million worth venture capital firm. As per a TOI report in September, Binny is expected to contribute about $50-80 million as a general partner in a yet-to-be-named investment firm dedicated. This idea behind this VC firm is to fill up the growth capital requirements for local and Southeast-Asian startups.

That said, Binny has been an active angel investor even before plans to set up this firm. Following his exit from Flipkart, Binny invested in several startups including Mobikon, a software star-tup focused on the food & beverage (F&B) industry. Apart from this, Binny recently topped up his investment with a $20 million fresh cheque in digital insurance firm Acko. He also invested in and became an executive chairman at technology consulting firm xto10x Technologies.

According to an annual financial report of xto10x with the MCA, the company which was launched over a year ago generated Rs 1.66 crore operating income from its consultancy services. It incurred Rs 1.67 crore total expenses, out of which Rs 1.32 crore were spent on employees benefit. It posted a net loss of Rs 1.01 lakh during FY19.