Exclusive: Sachin Bansal leads Rs 3,007 Cr round in Navi Technologies

Sachin Bansal has been directing a large chunk of his Flipkart fortune to Navi Technologies (formerly BAC Acquisitions). After infusing Rs 888 crore in November, Bansal has now led a round of Rs 3,007 crore in Navi — a financial services firm — along with participation from others. 

Navi Technologies has allotted 21.4 crore equity shares priced at Rs 140.5 each. Bansal invested Rs 253 crore in cash and Rs 2,675.08 crore through financial securities which include his entire stake of 94% in Chaitanya Rural Intermediation Development Services (CRIDS), reveal regulatory filings.

Apart from this, mutual fund units and financial instruments held by Bansal worth Rs 1,636.1 crore along with his stakes in startups such as Kissht, OfBusiness, Lendingkart, and Wheels EMI were also transferred. 

In the current round co-founder of Navi, Ankit Aggarwal has infused Rs 40 crore while former HDFC Bank managing director B. Paresh Suthankar has invested Rs 10 crore in the Bengaluru-based company.  Samit Shetty and Anand Rao, co-founders of the NBFC CRIDS also joined the round with investments of Rs 23.24 crore and Rs 4.02 crore respectively.

The investors in this round is an august list, with names  Paresh Sukthankar (former deputy MD, HDFC Bank); MS Gopalakrishnan (former sales & trading head at Standard Chartered) Narayanan Venkitaman (ex-head corporate banking at JP Morgan) and Shweta Mani (Data Head, Doxper).

The private placement offer was also floated with Kaushik Madhavan, Samuel Sunil Edwards (Bank of Sharjah) and Anirban Mukherjee (PayU CEO) but no allotment has been made to them till now. 

While investment from these notable individuals is not significant, Navi’s strategy seems to be to onboard influencers in the banking and financial sectors in line with Bansal’s ultimate goal of procuring a universal banking licence.

Navi — which is a result of Bansal’s Flipkart fortune worth $1 billion — has invested over Rs 1,800 crore in several companies and has bike rental firms Vogo and Bounce, lending startup KrazyBee and two NBFCs  - Altico Capital and IndoStar Capital among others in its portfolio. 

Last year, Navi had also acquired the mutual fund business of Essel Group and backed SMEs-focused lending platform U Gro Capital. It also purchased a debt paper issued by Piramal Group for Rs 200 crore. 

With this mega-fund allocation, Navi is expected to in turn infuse debts in cash-starved companies looking for debt capital as venture capitalists are wary of fund growth-stage companies at the time of COVID-19 pandemic.