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Amidst the raging controversy over the exit of co-founder Binny Bansal from Flipkart, Walmart has quietly gone ahead and increased its stake in Flipkart to 81.3 per cent from 77 per cent, which it had acquired for $16 billion in May.
The other equity holders in Flipkart are: Tencent 5.37 per cent, Tiger Global 4.77 per cent, Binny Bansal 4.2 per cent, Microsoft 1.53 per cent, Accel 1.38 per cent, Iconiq Capital 0.98 per cent, Temasek 0.29 per cent and UBS 0.19 per cent, as per data sourced from data intelligence platform, paper.vc.
In May, Walmart had said that it is acquiring a 77 per cent stake in Flipkart for $16 billion. This included an equity infusion of $2 billion into the e-commerce venture. A good part of the total equity infusion might have resulted in an increase in its stake by 4.3 per cent.
Post Walmart primary, as per estimates, SoftBank Vision had a 19.08 per cent stake, Tiger Global 18.83 per cent, Nasper 11.78 per cent, eBay 5.61 per cent, Tencent 5.41 per cent, Accel 5.31 per cent, Sachin Bansal 5.10 per cent and Binny Bansal 4.82 per cent.
In talks with investors
Walmart had earlier said that it was in talks with other investors to buy into Flipkart and one of the main investors that it had pursued was Google. But with the increase in its stake to over 80 per cent, it remains to be seen whether Google and a few others would be keen to pick up stake in the Indian e-commerce company and whether the rest of the investors would want to sell their shares.
Walmart said it is in talks to bring new investors into Flipkart. One person familiar with the matter said that Flipkart is in discussions with Google, Intel and existing investor Microsoft to raise more capital. The valuation of Flipkart might also have gone up since May when it was valued at $20 billion because of the huge success of its festival season sales which concluded recently.
As per the filings, Binny Bansal has been named as the sole founder of Flipkart now that Sachin Bansal has exited the company completely. Binny Bansal can remain a director as long he satisfies the ‘minimum ownership threshold’. He can remain a director on the board till he owns at least 3,532,977 ordinary shares in the company. Walmart can replace him with an independent director in case the stake falls below the ownership threshold limit.
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