Binny Bansal sells his shares in Flipkart for the third time since Walmart’s entry

• Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal cashed out a part of his shares by selling them to investment firm Tiger Global.
• With this, Tiger Global increases its stake in Flipkart.
• Meanwhile, Bansal has been actively investing in Indian startups.

Flipkart’s co-founder Binny Bansal sold another tranche of his shares in Flipkart to Tiger Global for over $14 million, according to filings sourced by paper.vc.

However, the report also says that given Flipkart’s subsidiary company Phonepe’s growth, the company’s valuation could have risen. It means Bansal’s buyout could be worth $25 million.

His stake in the company will be as a little as 3%, after the deal.

Flipkart was also in the news recently as its board gave approval for its employees to cash out stock options for over $100 million. Employees could liquidate 10% of their stock options in the company.

In June 2019, rumours were rife that Walmart is looking to exit from Flipkart as the latter heads for an IPO in the US. It was then that Bansal had sold some of his shares. Bansal, who had exited from all operational roles in the company over allegations of personal misconduct, sold a part of his shares for $76.4 million, according to filings sourced by paper.vc.

During the sale of Flipkart to Walmart in 2018, Bansal made as much as $159 million by selling over 1.1 million shares.


Cashing out for investments

Since his Flipkart exit, Bansal turned into a full-time investor.

In January this year, Binny Bansal had closed the first round of $32 million for his VC fund called ‘021 Capital’ which he formed with Sailesh Tulshan, his financial adviser. The former Flipkart Group CEO also raised a round from Premji Foundation and is also backed by former Flipkart employees.

Since then, he has made personal bets like in Masaba Gupta’s fashion label, insurtech startup Acko and legal startup Spotdraft amongst others.