Sachin Bansal Gets CCI’s Green Channel Approval To Acquire Essel Mutual Fund

Sachin Bansal’s BAC Acquisitions (BACQ), on October 7, got Competition Commission of India (CCI) nod to acquire Essel Mutual Funds. The application was filed by BACQ and Essel Finance Asset Management Company.

In a tweet, CCI’s official handle said that the acquisition has been accorded the first ‘green channel’ approval. Green Channel approval is a mechanism set up by CCI in August this year, to facilitate faster approvals in certain categories of mergers and acquisitions.

Bansal’s negotiations with Essel Mutual Fund were first reported in July this year, however, reports suggest that the Flipkart cofounder was in talks with various financial experts to launch a new venture in the fintech sector. By this acquisition, Flipkart cofounder’s BACQ has officially ventured into the mutual fund space.

BACQ is a tech fund registered by Sachin Bansal and Ankit Agarwal in Bengaluru to optimise business automation and enable digitisation of processes across sectors. The company increased its authorised capital share to INR 7.5K Cr ($1.05 Bn) in January 2019. After this Bansal had invested another $7 Mn (INR 50 Cr) in the company.

According to BACQ filing of January 2019, accessed Inc42, the company’s objective is “to acquire, maintain, develop, and make available information-technology-driven products for providing services of every kind including, commercial, data processing, data entry, customer relationship management, communication, data analysis, social, gaming, design, cloud computing or other services.”

Since then, Bansal has invested across sectors through BACQ. Some of the investments include $35.16 Mn (INR 250 Cr) in NBFCs Altico Capital India and IndoStar Capital Finance, $3 Mn (INR 20.8 Cr) in dockless bike-sharing companies Vogo and Bounce and $92 Mn in mobility platform Ola.

In April this year, the BACQ was also in talks to invest $2.86 Mn (INR 20Cr) in Gurugram-based Milkbasket. However, the deal fell apart in June 2019.