- Walmart acquired Flipkart on 4th May 2018.
- Binny Bansal sold his 5 lakh shares worth $76.4 million to Walmart.
One of the biggest retailers across the world, Walmart has increased its holding in Flipkart by buying shares from its co-founder Binny Bansal worth $76.4 million. Walmart transferred the acquired shares to its Luxembourg entity- FIT Holdings SARL.
The Deal
According to regulatory filings sourced by business signals platform Paper.vc., total shares acquired by Walmart from Binny Bansal were 5,39,912 while it is only a portion of the latter’s shareholding in Walmart.
It indicates that Binny Bansal has monetized a “small portion of his shareholding for what appears to be a cash consideration of $76.4 million,” paper.vc said based on which Bansal’s holding in Flipkart has gone down from “3.85 percent to 3.52 percent.”
Paper.vc also stated, “Binny Bansal had sold his 11,22,433 shares for around $159 million that reduced his stake in Flipkart from “7,476,271 equity shares (before the deal) to 6,353,838 equity shares after the acquisition, during Walmart’s $16 billion acquisition of Flipkart for around 77 percent controlling stake.
The journey of Binny Bansal
Binny Bansal resigned from his role as Group CEO at Flipkart in November last year following charges of personal misconduct. He took over the newly created position in January 2017. He was replaced by Kalyan Krishnamurthy as the new CEO. His co-founder Sachin Bansal had become the Executive Chairman in early 206 till May 2018 before exiting Flipkart to launch BACQ to invest in startups.
After exiting as Group CEO from Flipkart, Binny Bansal has launched xto10x Technologies along with former McKinsey executive Saikiran Krishnamurthy in December last year. “We help our clients build secure, cloud-enabled, mobile and IoT ready products and services that are uniquely suited to their needs while reworking and realigning their existing systems and operations to build and accelerate secure and sustainable market growth.” says the website of his new venture xto10x Technologies.
Bansal has so far backed 31 companies including Sigtuple, Niramai, etc. as per data tracker, Crunchbase and is actively investing in more Indian startups.
Walmart had earlier this month in its quarterly filings (ending April 30, 2019) had stated earmarking around $1.2 billion out of its $2.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents as of April 30 this year to “fund the operations of Flipkart.”
With Walmart investing more money in Flipkart and buying stakes from Binny Bansal, it clearly shows the intention to be the king. With more money coming into Flipkart, it will be great to watch how it fares in the market along with the competition they are facing from Amazon.
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