Binny Bansal, the co-founder of Flipkart, along with Accel, one of the company's earliest investors, and US-based Tiger Global Management, have made an extraordinary exit from the e-commerce giant. The trio has fully divested their stakes, selling them to Walmart, people familiar with the matter said.
This comes five years after Sachin Bansal, another co-founder of Flipkart, sold his entire stake to Walmart back in 2018. Binny Bansal had continued to hold a small portion of his stake in Flipkart after the acquisition. This recent development marks the complete exit of the Bansal duo from the company they founded, signifying a major transition in the firm's ownership structure.
After his exit, Sachin Bansal ventured into becoming a serial investor, pumping nearly $200 million within a year of his departure into flagship companies. He also started Navi, a fintech company, in 2018. His sale of Flipkart to Walmart had yielded an impressive $1-$1.5 billion windfall.
Binny Bansal is also an investor in PhonePe and is also on the company's board. Reports say that he is looking to invest more in PhonePe and increase his stake.
He also runs "xto10x" - a startup accelerator which he co-founded along with Saikiran Krishnamurthy, former head of Ekart which is owned by Flipkart.
Accel, both in India and the US, was an early backer of Flipkart, holding over 20 percent of the company when they first invested in 2008. However, over the years, they gradually reduced their stake to around 6 percent by the time Walmart acquired a majority share in 2018.
Notably, unlike most other investors, Accel retained a small 1.1 percent stake even after the acquisition, until now. As people in the know revealed, Accel's decision to exit has resulted in cumulative returns of an astonishing $1.5-2 billion, showcasing a remarkable 25-30X return on their total investment of approximately $60-80 million over the years.
These exits come half a decade after Walmart's purchase of a 77 percent stake in Flipkart for a staggering $16 billion in May 2018.
Flipkart's journey began in 2007, when it solely operated as an online bookstore out of a Bengaluru apartment. Accel's early investment of $8,00,000 in 2008 kickstarted the company's expansion, and later, Tiger Global joined as an investor in 2010.
The US-based hedge fund went on to double down on its investment in 2015, injecting a cumulative total of $1.2 billion into the e-commerce giant and ultimately reaping a staggering $3.5 billion in returns.
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