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If you are a startup founder looking for a secret recipe to maximize your business valuation, here is one trick: dilute your stakes to a minority. As per an ET report, a number of founders who diluted their stakes to a minority as a tradeoff for boosting valuations are now worth millions of dollars.

The ET report cited examples of the famous Flipkart duo, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal who hold a 7.5% stake in Flipkart, but have their individual holdings pegged at more than $800 million (nearly Rs 5,000 crore) based on the $11-billion valuation for India's largest electronic marketplace.

Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO of Ola cabs also have 12% stake in the country's largest taxi booking company, valued at $1.4 billion. The company is worth $168 million.

These two companies clearly testify that it is not the percentage ownership but absolute value of founder stake that matters. "Beyond a point, the best founders are missionaries focused on creating large lasting businesses in addition to just wealth creation," Avnish Bajaj, managing director at Matrix Partners India, an investor in Ola and online classifieds Quikr told ET.

Mukul Singhal, who leads early-stage investments for SAIF Partners, also agrees with Avnish. He told ET, “"In a high-growth environment where growth cycles have compressed, companies end up burning more capital and have to raise more capital. That implies more dilution."

Globally, it is not unusual for founders to own minority stakes in their startups. Travis Kalanick, founder of San Francisco-based Uber, owns an 8-10% stake in the cab aggregator valued at $40 billion.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma's 7.4% stake in the Chinese ecommerce marketplace was valued at around $13 billion at the time of its public market debut in the United States. Some investors fear that Indian founders may be diluting their stakes at a faster rate than their global peers.