Tencent acquires stake worth $264M in Flipkart from Binny Bansal

Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent has bought stake worth $264 million (about Rs 2,060 crore) in Flipkart from its co-founder Binny Bansal through its European subsidiary, according to official documents.

Singapore-headquartered ecommerce firm Flipkart has operations in India only.

Bansal holds around 1.84 percent stake in Flipkart after selling part of his stake to Tencent Cloud Europe BV.

The transaction was completed on October 26, 2021, and was shared with the government authorities at the beginning of the current financial year.

Post the transaction, Tencent arm holds 0.72 percent stake in Flipkart valued at around $264 million, as per the last valuation of $37.6 billion disclosed by the ecommerce giant in July 2021.

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The company's valuation surged to $37.6 billion after raising $3.6 billion (about Rs 26,805.6 crore) in a funding round led by Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC, CPP Investments, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and Walmart.

DisruptAD, Qatar Investment Authority, Khazanah Nasional Berhad as well as marquee investors Tencent, Willoughby Capital, Antara Capital, Franklin Templeton, and Tiger Global also participated in the funding round.

The transaction between Bansal and Tencent took place after the July funding round.

Sources said the transaction took place in Singapore but Flipkart informed Indian authorities about it that the transaction does not fall under the purview of 'Press Note 3' which calls for scrutiny of investment that any Indian company gets from countries sharing a land border with India.

While there are several companies operating in India in which Tencent has made an investment, the government has banned some gaming apps including PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite which were published by Tencent Group. Ab email query sent to Flipkart and Bansal did not elicit any reply.