Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal to set up $400 million VC fund: ET report

While the corpus of this fund could be in the region of $300 to $400 million, Binny Bansal himself may pitch in with up to 20% of this amount.
Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal to set up $400 million VC fund: ET report
Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal to set up $400 million VC fund: ET report
Written by:

Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal is turning into a venture capitalist by setting up a VC fund based out of Singapore. While the corpus of this fund could be in the region of $300 to $400 million, Bansal himself may pitch in with up to 20% of this amount. 

The VC fund is likely to pick startups for funding. Though the focus will be on India, some of the other countries in South East Asia may also be under the radar of the new VC fund to be established. 

There’s no revelation of the firm’s name as yet. Operations may start by the end of this year. The period between now and the end of the year will be utilised in bringing other investors on board to build the corpus as intended.

Binny Bansal still holds a small equity in Flipkart; it was reported that when Walmart decided to pay $16 billion last year to acquire 77% in Flipkart, Binny Bansal’s stocks were worth around $1 billion.

Observers see in this move by Binny Bansal to turn into a pure-play investor after being an entrepreneur, some similarity in the way it happens in evolved economies like China or the US. In the Indian context, serial entrepreneurs prefer to start other ventures while using part of what they earned to make investments here and there. Binny Bansal’s friend and co-founder at Flipkart Sachin Bansal, himself has ventured into the financial service space by floating a company BACQ.

There are other similar examples like Mukesh Bansal of Myntra and Kunal Shah of Freecharge as well.

Binny Bansal is said to be following the founders of auction engine Baazee.com who sold the company and then launched two independent venture capital funds, Matrix Partners and Nexus Venture Partners. The investors were Avnish Bajaj and Suvir Sujan.

Binny Bansal has been keeping himself busy helping some of his former colleagues in their ventures. He agreed to be the Executive Chairman of xto10x Technologies floated by Saikiran Krishnamoorthy. Bansal has made some investment too in this venture. Saikiran was with Flipkart after having put in a stint at McKinsey.

Some of the other notable investments made by Bansal include Sig Tuple, an AI-based healthcare startup, Niramai Health Analytix, a breast-cancer screening startup and Stellaps, an IoT company.

Related Stories

No stories found.
The News Minute
www.thenewsminute.com