Flipkart has bought back shares worth $350 million from several minority investors, including DST Global, IDG Ventures and ICONIQ Capital, as India\u2019s most valuable internet start-up prepares to sell a majority stake to Walmart Inc.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s largest online retailer has bought back about 1.9 million preference shares from minority investors in a transaction that values Flipkart at $17.69 billion, according to documents filed with Singapore\u2019s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority that were sourced from data intelligence platform Paper.VC.<\/p>\n
According to the documents, the buyback is a significant step towards Flipkart converting itself into a private company as per Singapore law, paving the way for its proposed sale to Walmart.<\/p>\n
This is the second such transaction in the past 12 months, although in the latest instance, a number of minority Flipkart shareholders have been handed complete exits. In August, most of Flipkart\u2019s minority shareholders sold a portion of their stakes to SoftBank, which pumped in roughly $2.5 billion in Flipkart to buy primary and secondary shares in the online retailer.<\/p>\n
Some of the individual investors who have sold their shareholdings in Flipkart completely in the latest buyback include Accel\u2019s Shekhar Kirani and SoftBank\u2019s Deep Nishar. A large number of pension funds have also exited as part of the latest deal.<\/p>\n
Most of Flipkart\u2019s large investors, including Tiger Global, Accel, Microsoft, Naspers and eBay, remain on Flipkart\u2019s capitalization table, although Tiger Global and Accel\u2014Flipkart\u2019s two earliest investors\u2014have sold a small portion of their holdings from their earlier funds as part of this deal.<\/p>\n
Mint reported on 2 May that Walmart, the world\u2019s largest retailer, is in final negotiations to buy a majority stake in Flipkart even as a rival combination of Flipkart and Amazon looks increasingly unlikely. Walmart and some Flipkart investors, including Japan\u2019s SoftBank Group Corp., are yet to agree on the final details and a deal could take at least a month to be signed, the report said.<\/p>\n
The Walmart-Flipkart negotiations have been reported by Mint and other publications for several months now.<\/p>\n
The Economic Times newspaper first reported about the negotiations in January, although it had said that the deal would be a minority investment.<\/p>\n
The buyback also appears to be the first somewhat public confirmation from Flipkart of its current sale talks with Walmart, which will buy at least 55% of Flipkart in a deal that will value the company at $20-21 billion. Walmart may end up spending anywhere between $8 billion and $12 billion to buy a majority stake in Flipkart, and is expected to increase its shareholding in the online retailer in a phased manner.<\/p>\n
Mint reported on Wednesday that Walmart also wants Flipkart co-founders Binny Bansal (group chief executive officer) and Sachin Bansal (executive chairman) and CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy to continue in their roles after the acquisition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Flipkart has bought back shares worth $350 million from several minority investors, including DST Global, IDG Ventures and ICONIQ Capital, as India\u2019s most valuable internet start-up prepares to sell a majority stake to Walmart Inc. The country\u2019s largest online retailer has bought back about 1.9 million preference shares from minority investors in a transaction that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30093,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30094,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30092\/revisions\/30094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}