Sachin Bansal Explores Second Inning In Fintech And Agritech

Sachin Bansal Looks At Financial Inclusion As CRIDS’ CEO

SUMMARY

Sachin Bansal will establish a holding company through which he will run his new businesses and make investments

Bansal has roped in Ankit Agarwal, an investment banker, as his partner and founding employee

He has been in talks to invest in Ola, Ather Energy etc

After six months of exiting Flipkart with $1Bn returns, Sachin Bansal is venturing back into Indian startup ecosystem looking for opportunities in fintech and agritech.

A media report citing sources said that Sachin Bansal will establish a holding company through which he will run his new businesses and make investments along with his new partner Ankit Agarwal, who he has known from his IIT-Delhi days.

Sachin is expected to directly operate his new businesses as well as invest in the agritech and fintech segments. However, the launch date for this new venture is not yet set.

Ankit Agarwal is an investment banker and was last working as a director at Bank of America, where he worked on interest rate trading.

After the Walmart-Flipkart deal, Sachin Bansal has been in talks to invest in cab-hailing company Ola, electric bike maker Ather Energy, artificial intelligence-based healthcare venture Sigtuple, and online insurance company Acko.

The interest of Sachin Bansal in fintech and agritech attributes the high-potential of the sector which has continued to attract investments along with innovation.

To begin with, according to Inc42’s flagship Ecosystem Report, Fintech as a sector has received $6.3 Bn funding since 2008 across 815 deals. This continues to be the trend, as the Indian Tech Startup Funding H1 2018 report, states that fintech startups raised a combined funding of $631.29 Mn across 70 deals in H1 2018.

At the same time, in agritech, we have investors like Omnivore Partners, Future Venture Capital Company Ltd. (FVCCL), IDG Venture, Accel Partners, Aspada Investments, IvyCap Ventures, Unitus Seed Fund, Rabo Equity Advisors, SAIF Partners, Villgro Innovations Foundation, Qualcomm Ventures and IDFC, among others.

The sector has raised $36 Mn from 15 agritech startups in 2017. IBEF report suggests that the country’s Gross Value Added (GVA) from the sector is estimated to have grown at 3% in FY18.

Entrepreneurs playing their second innings include Ibibo co-founder Ashish Kashyap who launched his fintech venture INDWealth with focus on wealth management and ex-Freecharge co-founder Kunal Shah has a new fintech venture CRED, which enables credit card bill payments.

Also, we have InMobi founder Amit Gupta traversing ecosystem with his new Internet of Things-focused startup Yulu Bike, which provides dockless bicycles sharing for the first mile, last mile, and short distance commute. Yulu has made it to Inc42’s 42Next, a list of the 42 most innovative startups causing an impact in the Indian startup ecosystem.

Another entrepreneur who has made his second attempt at entrepreneurship fruitful is Taxi For-Sure cofounder Aprameya Radhakrishna who founded Vokal, a knowledge sharing platform in the P2P info-sharing space for Bharat.

After CRED, Yulu, Vokal and INDWealth creating buzz and raising funds, the Indian startup ecosystem has high hopes set with Sachin Bansal’s new venture.

[The development was reported by ET.]