Chennai: Six months after quitting the company, Binny Bansal, a Co-Founder of Flipkart, has sold a part of his stake to Walmart for $76.4 million.
“Regulatory filings submitted by Flipkart now indicate that Binny Bansal has transferred a portion of his shareholding to Walmart,” a statement by data platform paper.vc said.
Bansal transferred 539,912 equity shares to FIT Holdings SARL, Walmart’s Luxembourg entity. With this transfer, Binny Bansal has monetised a small portion of his shareholding for what appears to be a cash consideration of $76.4 million.
According to paper.vc, with this sale, Binny’s holding in Flipkart has reduced from 3.85 per cent to 3.52 per cent.
It is not known if Binny will retain the holding till the planned US listing of Flipkart, reportedly, in 2022. During the acquisition of Flipkart, Walmart had said that an IPO was a possibility over the next four years.
This is not the first time the co-founder is selling his stake to Walmart. Bansal’s holding fell from 7,476,271 equity shares before the acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart to 6,353,838 equity shares post-acquisition. Thus, he sold 1,122,433 shares for about $159 million during the Walmart takeover. Walmart had bought 77 per cent controlling stake in Flipkart for $16 billion.
The two stake sales fetched Binny over $235 million. In contrast, Sachin Bansal, the other Flipkart Co-Founder, had received $1 billion when he sold off his entire stake and exited in the company during the Walmart acquisition in May 2018. Then, Binny had decided to stay on. However, in November 2018, he resigned from the company following allegations of personal misconduct.
Among the stakeholders of Flipkart, Tiger Global, one of the earliest PE backers of Flipkart had sold 17 per cent stake during the largest acquisition in the e-commerce space and had held back 5 per cent holdings. SoftBank had exited the company selling off over 20 per cent holdings. Accel and Naspers were the two other PE funds backing the company.
