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How Sachin Bansal is spending his $1 bn-plus Flipkart fortune

How Sachin Bansal is spending his $1 bn-plus Flipkart fortune
Sachin Bansal  |  Photo Credit: Photo Credit: Reuters
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After selling his stake in Flipkart, the ecommerce firm he founded with IIT Delhi buddy Binny Bansal over a decade ago, Sachin Bansal hasn’t wasted much time putting his money to work. Since his exit from Flipkart in May last year, Bansal has pumped capital into as many as 18 companies. More than half of those are fintech and financial services businesses. 

Investing in startups isn’t recent for Bansal. He’s been backing such businesses as an angel investor much before he sold his stake in Flipkart for more than $1 billion. But, that deal run saw him back startups across a diverse range of sectors including edtech, hyperlocal ecommerce, foodtech, realty-tech, healthcare, spacetech and more. 

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The ongoing investment run, which started early this year, is dramatically different. Bansal has shifted his focus from the consumer internet sector and is placing bets on the opportunities emerging at the intersection of technology and financial services.

Further, he isn’t just sitting on the sidelines and parking capital where he thinks there’s an upside. He’s diving headlong into the business itself. Last week, notably, he donned the entrepreneurial hat when he bought microfinance institution Chaitanya Rural Intermediation Development Services for about $104 million and took charge as its CEO. The transaction also marked his biggest deal since Flipkart.

Much of his current investment run is through a personal investment vehicle named BAC Acquisitions, which he founded in December 2018 with another IIT Delhi batchmate and former investment banker Ankit Agarwal. Financial services is only one of the sectors in which BAC is interested. It also invests in sectors such as healthcare, energy, media and entertainment, consumer goods, engineering, retail, logistics, food and beverages, infrastructure and construction.

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Since the creation of BAC Acquisitions, Bansal has also upped his investment ticket size, making larger bets including a nearly $100 million investment in ride hailing platform Ola

TechCircle takes a closer look at Bansal’s latest investment run as the former Flipkart CEO takes centerstage as one of India’s most prolific and influential individual investors in the new economy.


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