Flipkart Investor T.Rowe Price Marks Down Its Stake Value By 15%

A US-based mutual fund managed by T.Rowe Price has marked down its shares in ecommerce giant Flipkart by 15%.

T Rowe Price has invested about $100 Mn in Flipkart in December 2014, when the firm raised $700 Mn funding.

According to its filings made for March quarter, T Rowe marked the value of its Flipkart shares at $120.69 per unit as compared to the value of $142.26 assigned to them at the end of December 2015.

“The first quarter was an extremely volatile period for global equity markets. In determining fair values for our private investments, we continued to follow our long-established process of considering a variety of company-specific and market-based factors,” said a spokesman for T. Rowe Price to Nasdaq.

Other major stakes that were marked down by the investment firm included Uber Technologies Inc., Dropbox Inc and apartment-rental site Airbnb Inc. Altogether, T. Rowe marked down the value of its stakes in 12 companies valued at $1 Bn or more, and marked up four.

Rowe is the second firm that has marked down Flipkart’s valuation. In February 2016 Morgan Stanley has marked down Flipkart shares by 27%. The news came at a time when a lot has been talked about the slowdown in funding for Indian startups.

Flipkart’s shares were valued by Morgan Stanley at $103.97 per share as of December 2015, down from $142.24 per share as of June 2015 and $117.96 per share as of December 2014.

Later in March, reports surfaced that venture capital firm IDG Ventures was looking to sell its remaining 0.9 percent stake in Flipkart.

In 2015, IDG had sold its 1% stake in Flipkart for around INR 900 Cr. at a valuation of $12.5 Bn.

Flipkart’s other key shareholders include investment firm Tiger Global Management, Naspers, Singapore Sovereign Wealth GIC, DST Global, and early stage investment firm Accel.

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