Flipkart’s Sachin Bansal may launch new venture, eyes fintech and agri-tech: Report

Sachin Bansal, the Flipkart co-founder who made an estimated $1 billion when his firm was acquired by Walmart, plans to launch a new venture in two emerging sectors—agri-tech and fintech, a media report stated.

Bansal will set up a holding company from where he will manage his upcoming startups as well as his investments, The Economic Times reported, citing two people in the know.

The celebrated entrepreneur has hired his IIT-Delhi alumni Ankit Agarwal as a partner and founding employee at the new entity, the report added. In his most recent role, Agarwal was a director at Bank of America and has worked with Deutsche Bank in the past, his LinkedIn profile shows.

Bansal will reportedly run his new businesses directly and will make large minority and majority investments in agri-tech and fintech, the ET report stated, citing the people mentioned above.

The report also said that Bansal has held talks with medical-technology startup SigTuple and online insurance venture Acko for potential investments.

Phone calls and mobile text messages sent to Bansal did not elicit any response till the time of publishing this report.

Bansal, who is also an angel investor, usually writes cheques ranging between $1 million and $10 million, according to business information platform Crunchbase.

According to VCCEdge, the data research platform of News Corp VCCircle, Bansal has made 16 angel investments so far. The list includes electric scooter maker Ather Energy, space technology startup Team Indus, news aggregation portal News in Shorts and ed-tech startup Unacademy.

According to a recent report by ET, Bansal was reportedly planning to invest $100 million in cab-hailing app Ola. If the deal goes through, this would be one the largest investments made by an individual in an Indian startup. In 2016, Bansal and Ola co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal had teamed up to fight for a ‘level-playing field’ for Indian startups. Their demand found resonance among many entrepreneurs in the country. Reportedly, he had also considered investing $30 million in his portfolio company Ather Energy.

In August this year, business daily Mint had reported that Bansal was looking to raise a venture capital fund of $700 million to $1 billion to invest in startups. Bansal might contribute up to 40% of the fund, the report said.

Bansal exited Flipkart in May after selling his entire stake in the company to US-based retail giant Walmart, whose acquisition closed in August this year. He held about 5.10% stake in the company he founded, pocketing about $1 billion after the sale. The US-based retailer had announced its decision to buy 77% of the company for $16 billion in May. Bansal had launched Flipkart in 2008 along with Binny Bansal.

Early this month, Binny Bansal resigned from the e-commerce company as group chief executive officer following an independent probe into allegations of ‘serious personal misconduct’. He had denied the allegations.

Tags: Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal, Flipkart, Walmart, Ankit Agarwal