US retail giant Walmart paid $3.5 billion dollars to acquire shares from Flipkart's non-controlling shareholders and settle the liability to former non-controlling shareholders of PhonePe, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Friday. Among stakeholders whose stakes were acquired, reportedly include Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, Accel and US-based Tiger Global Management among others.
“During the six months ended July 31, 2023, the company paid $3.5 billion to acquire shares from certain Flipkart non-controlling interest holders and settle the liability to former non-controlling interest holders of PhonePe. Additionally, during the six months ended July 31, 2023, the company received $0.7 billion related to new rounds of equity funding for the company's majority-owned PhonePe subsidiary,” Walmart said in its SEC filing.
As per a Moneycontrol report, Binny Bansal has exited the e-commerce giant selling his remaining shares to Walmart. Accel, Tigar Global, Franklin Templeton, and other investors have sold their full stakes. With this move, Walmart now owns a little over 80 per cent of Flipkart, said the report citing data from Tracxn. While the company spokesperson confirmed the devoploment to the news-site they only confirmed buying stakes of Tiger Global and didn’t share more names.
Walmart acquired Flipkart's 77 per cent stake in 2018 in a $16 billion deal. At the time Sachin Bansal sold his stake to Walmart, while Binny Bansal retained a small part of it.
The report noted that Accel held over 20 per cent stake in Flipkart in 2008 when it first invested in the firm. Gradually, it reduced stakes to about 6 per cent before Walmart acquired Flipkart in 2018. Earlier, Bloomberg had reported that Walmart Inc. paid $1.4 billion to acquire Tiger Global Management’s remaining stake in Flipkart.
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Reports say Binny Bansal is now gearing up for a fresh foray into the e-commerce sector following the expiration of his five-year non-compete agreement with Walmart. He has amassed a substantial fortune of approximately $1-1.5 billion from his previous endeavors.
Similarly, Accel, with both its India and US branches combined, earned a 25-30X return on its initial investment of $60-80 million in Flipkart. Tiger Global also gained around $3.5 billion via his investment, as per the Wall Street Journal report.