Walmart coughed up $3.5 Bn to acquire Tiger, Accel and Binny Bansal’s stake in Flipkart

Walmart has spent $3.5 billion to acquire Flipkart’s remaining stakes from its backers Accel Partners, Tiger Global and the e-commerce marketplace’s co-founder Binny Bansal. The world’s largest retailer has disclosed this in a SEC filing.

Accel was Flipkart’s early backer while Tiger Global invested over $1 billion in the Bengaluru-based firm across several rounds.

According to Fintrackr’s estimate, Tiger Global owned 4.7% stake in Flipkart and it made around $1 billion in a secondary transaction in July which valued the firm at $35 billion.

Binny Bansal took away $650 million as he divested his stake at the same valuation. The secondary transaction was executed at a lower valuation as Flipkart was valued at $37.6 billion in a primary funding round worth $3.6 billion in 2021 from GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and SoftBank, among others.

In July, Flipkart paid $700 million to its employees to compensate for the loss of value resulting from the PhonePe separation. While the exact number of employees who benefited from the cash payout was not disclosed, more than 24,000 employees reportedly made money including former Flipkart and Myntra staff.

In December 2022, Flipkart and PhonePe underwent a separation and became separate entities. As a result of this hive-off, PhonePe transformed into a fully India domiciled company.

Following the acquisition from these investors and Binny Bansal, Walmart is estimated to own about 90% of Flipkart. Walmart acquired a majority stake of 77% in the company for about $16 billion in August 2018.