Silicon Valley-Based South Park Commons Enters India In Collaboration With Binny Bansal

Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture fund South Park Commons (SPC) has entered India with the opening of its first international outpost in Bengaluru.

In collaboration with Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal, SPC-India will provide a supportive environment for founders, technologists, and researchers to navigate the -1 to 0 stage of their careers, it said in a statement.

Founded in 2015 by Ruchi Sanghvi, the first female engineer at Facebook and former VP of Operations at Dropbox, SPC is a tech startup community and early-stage venture fund dedicated to supporting founders, technologists, researchers, and builders during the -1 to 0 stage of their career, when their goal is to figure out what to work on next.

Sanghvi was joined by Aditya Agarwal, former CTO of Dropbox, with the founding of the SPC Fund in 2018. SPC has presence in San Francisco and New York City.

Commenting on the India foray, Agarwal said, “You can feel the tailwinds here. The Indian startup ecosystem has matured to the point that it can sustain the incredible talent density that makes SPC work. Founders don’t have to move to the US to build world-class, category-creating companies.”

While the SPC model requires a critical mass of world-class technical talent, seasoned operators from successful local companies, and a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem, Bengaluru has all the ingredients to become the next leading technology hub, the statement added.

“SPC supports founders when they are most vulnerable, when they take the plunge to start a company. We are excited to bring together the most talented technical founders in Bengaluru and help them find their life’s work,” Sanghvi said.

SPC has launched two funds till date and counts Indian unicorns like Cure.Fit and Meesho in its portfolio.

Agarwal and Sanghvi told Moneycontrol that SPC has closed its third fund. Without disclosing the size of the fund, they said that SPC is also planning to launch a new fund dedicated to India.

The partnership with Bansal comes a few months after he stepped down from the board of Flipkart in January, citing a conflict of interest between the ecommerce major and his new venture OppDoor.

In 2022, Bansal sold some of his stake in Flipkart for $264 Mn (around INR 2,060 Cr) to Chinese tech giant Tencent. This brought down his stake to 1.84%. Last year, Bansal sold his remaining stake in Flipkart to Walmart, which acquired a majority stake in the ecommerce giant in 2018 for $18 Bn.

In addition to being an entrepreneur, Bansal is also an active investor in several startups including VideoVerse, Curefoods, SuperK, among others.