Binny Bansal’s Xto10X Takes Singapore Route To Enter Southeast Asia

Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal-led software and consulting firm Xto10X has stepped into the Southeast Asia market by setting up an office in Singapore to help startups in the region.

The operations in the region will be run by Chai Jia Ji, former executive at Airbnb and marketplace Carousell. According to the company’s press release, Bansal will also be based in Singapore to support the team and will serve as an advisor to Southeast Asian startups.

Bansal founded Xto10X Technologies in 2018, along with fellow former Flipkart executive Saikiran Krishnamurthy, after his exit from the ecommerce company Flipkart, following the Walmart acquisition of May 2018. With this venture, Bansal plans to help entrepreneurs by offering tools, learning and counselling services to growth-stage startups.

Xto10X offers three services — a product suite across strategy and data science to execution; a learning platform with curated courseware, events and reference cases; and consulting and mentoring to help founders.

This move to expand its services to Southeast Asia comes after two major developments. First, Bansal is reportedly setting up a new venture capital fund of $300 Mn to $400 Mn to invest in Southeast Asian startups. According to reports, Indian startups will be the prime focus of the venture fund, but it will also be looking for opportunities to invest in startups of  Southeast Asian startups.

Bansal will be initially be the general partner (GP) and anchor investor of the fund, but will eventually take more investors on board. However, Bansal is likely to invest 10-20% of the fund’s before other investors join in. Moreover, Bansal has reportedly started getting the fund’s team together, which will likely include Flipkart’s former executive Rajneesh Baweja.

Secondly, this month Bansal also sold  5.3 Lakh shares worth $76 Mn to Luxembourg entity FIT Holdings SARL, which is owned and operated by Walmart. With this Bansal reduced his shares in the Flipkart to 3.3%. Back in June, Bansal had sold the same number of shares for $76 Mnto SARL.