Sachin Bansal Invests $7 Mn In BAC Acquisitions

Flipkart cofounder Sachin Bansal has now invested $7 Mn (INR 50 Cr) in his new venture BAC Acquisitions.

According to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings accessed by Inc42, the company has alloted 50 Lakh equity shares to Sachin Bansal on January 25, 2019. The company had earlier increased its authorised share capital to INR 7,500 Cr ($1.05Bn) via a resolution passed during an extraordinary general meeting on December 26, 2018.

BAC Acquisitions

Reports of Sachin Bansal’s new venture had first surfaced in November 2018, when it was speculated that he would establish a holding company through which he will run his new businesses and make investments along with Ankit Agarwal, who he has known from his IIT-Delhi days.

The new venture was expected to invest in agritech and fintech sector along with other new businesses. On December 10, Bansal registered BAC Acquisitions Pvt Ltd as a holding company in Bengaluru.

Here’s What BAC Acquisitions Will Do

Through the company’s filings, Inc42 found that one of the main objectives of the company is to acquire, develop, and/or make available new technology platforms and disruptive technologies for innovation across sectors such as data sciences, healthcare, energy, media and entertainment.

It will also aim to develop platforms to optimise business automation and computerisation of processes in any of the aforesaid sectors.

Another major objective of the company 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.

Flipkart: A Forced Exit

Even with a cheque of $1 Bn, it is hard to ignore the speculations in the market that Bansal’s exit was triggered by an unexpected falling out with key backer Tiger Global’s Lee Fixel and the $16 Bn acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart.

During initial discussions with Walmart, Sachin Bansal reportedly was an integral part of the negotiations and was confident he would get a bigger role at Flipkart after the sale.

He also wanted stronger rights and guarantees that he would have a lot more say in Flipkart’s operations, however, this was strongly refuted by Kalyan Krishnamurthy, whom Walmart wanted to retain as CEO of Flipkart.

However, after his exit, cofounder Binny Bansal was also shown the door amid allegations of personal misconduct. While Walmart said that there was no proof of wrongdoing, Binny’s handling of the situation was cited as the reason for his resignation.

After 12 years of Flipkart, both the founders are out and exploring investments in various startups and also their own new ventures.