Flipkart raises $1.4 bn at $11.6 bn valuation, acquires eBay India

India’s largest e-commerce marketplace Flipkart has closed a $1.4 billion funding round with backing from Chinese Internet giant Tencent and participation from Microsoft and eBay Inc, at a valuation of $ 11.6 billion, the company said on Monday..

This latest round of funding brings down the valuation from a previous high of $15 billion, but it underlies the fact that Flipkart, which was written off, has made a rebound to attract investors in the company. Flipkart’s earlier investors Tiger Global Management, Naspers Group, Accel Partners and DST Global participated in the round. Flipkart will acquire the India unit of eBay Inc which will continue to be independent.

“We are delighted that Tencent, eBay and Microsoft — all innovation powerhouses — have chosen to partner with us on their India journey. We have chosen these partners based on their long histories of pioneering industries, and the unique expertise and insights each of them bring to Flipkart. This deal reaffirms our resolve to hasten the transformation of commerce in India through technology,” Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, Founders of Flipkart, said in a statement. (READ MORE)

Flipkart's Bansals no more billionaires, Patanjali's Bala now worth $3.6 bn

Latest Business News - Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal, who earned dollar billionaire status last year and whose wealth has fallen with successive markdowns of their firm’s valuation, are among the 31 Indian billionaires who are out of the Hurun Global Rich — Indian billionaires report.

Eleven of the 31 have lost their billionaire status since demonetisation. Prominent among them are Gautam Thapar of Crompton Greaves, Nilima Motaparti of Divi’s Labs, Prathap C Reddy & family of Apollo Hospitals, and Nandan Nilekani, an Infosys shareholder. This list is exclusively based on the share price performance of companies after demonetisation.

However, many billionaires have seen their wealth soaring. The cumulative wealth of 132 Indian or Indian-origin billionaires is estimated to have increased to $392 billion, up 16 per cent from last year, says the report.

Twenty-seven billionaires have been added to the list this year. Of the 27 entrants, Acharya Balakrishna of Patanjali Ayurved leads the pack with wealth of $3.6 billion, followed by Nadir B Godrej and Smitha V Crishna. Patym founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma also lands on the list with $1.5 billion, though his wealth is likely to be revised upwards with Reliance Capital selling its nearly one per cent stake to Alibaba at $41 million. (READ MORE)

Amid 600 job cuts, Snapdeal founders take 100% salary cut

Latest Business News - Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal have taken a 100 per cent salary cut, while many others at the firm have "proactively" offered significant reduction in compensation.

The SoftBank-backed firm, which has been struggling to raise fresh funding, is also laying off hundreds employees and eliminating non-core projects to focus on "profitable growth".



In an e-mail to employees, Bahl conceded that over the last 2-3 years, with all the capital coming into this market, the company and the entire industry "started making mistakes".

"We started growing our business much before the right economic model and market fit was figured out. We also started diversifying and starting new projects while we still hadn't perfected the first or made it profitable. We started building our team and capabilities for a much larger size of business than what was required with the present scale," he said.

Bahl cited examples of global companies like Apple, Tesla, Amazon, Netflix, Lego and Spicejet that "painted themselves into a corner many times over" before they became successful.(Read More)