Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal plans new start-up in e-commerce space

Binny Bansal, who netted about $1-$1.5 billion from his shareholding in Flipkart, is looking to incubate a start up in cross border e-commerce.

Binny Bansal, who recently sold his remaining stake in e-commerce firm Flipkart, is firming up plans to create a new start-up, sources aware of the development said.

Bansal, who netted about $1-$1.5 billion from his shareholding in Flipkart, is looking to incubate a startup in the cross-border e-commerce space. But, rather than a consumer-facing internet firm like Flipkart, he is looking to create a startup that will provide design, product and manpower support to Indian and global e-commerce companies.

“Think of it like a KPO or a knowledge process outsourcing firm for e-commerce. The idea is to build a global firm that can work with commerce companies and provide them backend support,” one of the people cited above said.

A second person said Bansal has also been scouting for a CEO to run his new venture. “While Binny (Bansal) will put his capital, he is not going to run the venture, unlike Sachin (Bansal, the other Flipkart co-founder), who is running Navi full time.”

Both the sources cited above said Binny Bansal is not seeking external capital and will bootstrap the venture with his own wealth.

Binny Bansal did not immediately reply to Moneycontrol’s queries.

Binny’s move to launch a start-up comes weeks after Moneycontrol reported that Bansal sold his remaining stake and fully exited Flipkart, the firm he founded with Sachin Bansal in 2007 and sold to Walmart in 2018 for around $16 billion. While Walmart had initially bought a 77 percent stake in the e-commerce company, its current holding has crossed 80 percent, as per Tracxn, after early investors like Accel, Tiger Global and others sold their shares to Walmart and made handsome returns.

The deal with Walmart came with a five-year non-compete clause which ended this year, allowing Binny to start up again in e-commerce, per sources.

The angel investor 

Since leaving Flipkart, Binny Bansal has become a prolific angel investor, with investments in such large startups like PhonePe, the fintech firm that fully spun off from Flipkart last year.

Binny Bansal has also backed Acko, Ather Energy, Curefoods, Cultfit, BrightChamps, Unacademy, Yulu and several others. In all, Binny Bansal has invested in over 60 startups, across sectors, according to Tracxn, a private market data provider.

He also backs VC firms like 021 Capital, Blume Ventures and several other marquee ones as a limited partner (LP).

His involvement with the startup ecosystem does not end there. He also started xto10x along with Saikiran Krishnamurthy and Neeraj Aggarwal, both former executives at EKart, Flipkart’s supply-chain business, to mentor upcoming startups and help scale their business.

Binny Bansal also runs his own VC firm. From Singapore, he operates Three State Ventures which invests in new-age companies.