Connect with us

News

Flipkart Board Approves Walmart Deal For $15 Billion

Published

on

Flipkart Board Approves Walmart Deal For $15 Billion,Featured,Startup News India, startup stories,Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal,Sachin Bansal to quit Walmart Deal,Flipkart Walmart Deal,Sachin Bansal latest news,Sachin Bansal Likely To quit after Walmart Deal,Flipkart Following Walmart Deal,Flipkart Walmart Deal updates


In a recent development the board of the ecommerce firm Flipkart, approved to sell 75% equity stake to a group of investors led by Walmart Inc., for $15 billion, Bloomberg reported. SoftBank will sell its 20+ per cent stake as a part of the deal, the report said. Google’s parent Alphabet Inc., is also likely to participate in the investment with Walmart. Reports also suggest the deal would be finalised in the next 10 days, although terms of the deal could still change.

The week noticed some surprising headlines about CEOs quitting the firms. From Jan Koum to Sachin Bansal, they seem to be taking extremely crucial decisions lately. Shortly after the Flipkart and the Walmart deal dominated the news, sources revealed Sachin Bansal, the online retail giant’s co founder, may exit the firm. This impending deal seems to play a vital role in his exit. Sachin may look to startup another venture again and also mentor other entrepreneurs. Even as the details are emerging, Walmart said it wants the duo, Binny Bansal and Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, who have been actively running the daily operations, as more critical members, to stay back, the sources revealed.

Earlier, reports confirmed while CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy would continue to head Flipkart, one among its founders, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal may exit. “Sachin is most likely to leave and Binny will stay.” Email sent to Flipkart and Sachin Bansal did not elicit a response at the time of filing this article. “I won’t be able to comment on anything related to this,” said Sachin Bansal in a text message.

Currently Sachin Bansal holds 5.5 % of shares in the company. If the deal with Walmart happens at a valuation of $20 billion his share would be worth over $1 billion. Flipkart buys back shares worth $ 350 million from its investors. The investors include DST Global, IDG Ventures and ICONIQ Capital. The online giant intends to sell a majority stake to the U.S., wholesale giant Walmart Inc.

Walmart Inc., is in advanced talks with Flipkart to acquire a dominant stake of more than 51 percent in the firm. All of it at a price of at least $18 billion, as sources reported to ReutersThe Walmart-Flipkart negotiations have been reported in the popular media for several months now.  The company also began the procedure of modifying itself in to a private limited company, changing its name to Flipkart Pte., Ltd., the filings showed. Furthermore, this is the second such transaction during the past 12 months.

In the latest instance, a number of minority Flipkart shareholders have been handed complete exits. In August 2017, most of Flipkart’s minority shareholders gave away a portion of their stakes to SoftBank.  Moving ahead, Accel Partners has clocked $113.5 Million through partial exits from Flipkart. Beside SoftBank and Accel Partners, IDG Ventures and Helion Ventures have gained excellent returns on their investment in the online giant. Other famous investors like Microsoft, Tencent and eBay have also invested in Flipkart last year.  

As of now, Tiger Global and SoftBank Group are the largest shareholders in Flipkart, each holding about 20% stake, and Naspers at about 13%. Sachin and Binny Bansal hold about 5% each in the company.

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Emerging Startup Stories

Suki: This Startup Wants To Transform Healthcare With Its Artificial Intelligence Tool

Published

on

Suki: This Startup Wants To Transform Healthcare With Its Artificial Intelligence Tool

We live in a rapidly transforming era where humanity is making exponential leaps in technology.  Thirty years ago, no one would have believed you could talk to an online voice assistant to create tasks and get things done.  Ten years ago, no one would have believed humanity would land robots on Mars.  Technology truly has improved the quality of living of every human who owns a smartphone and has access to an internet connection.  Voice assistants are slowly replacing manual tasks and making lives easier and efficient.  Siri, Alexa, Google Voice Assistant are just some of the widely used artificial intelligence based tools which are employed on a daily basis.  Artificial intelligence, which is hailed as the technology of the future is now slowly making its way into much more complex domains like self driving vehicles, quantum computing and also health care.

Suki, a United States of America based startup founded by Punit Soni, developed their own voice assistant which runs on artificial intelligence to simplify healthcare for doctors and other healthcare professionals.  In simple terms, Suki is akin to Siri for doctors.  While you could order a pizza or schedule an appointment on Siri, doctors could modify, edit and add health records of their patients.  Suki is a powerful tool to help doctors with documentation of health records which often take hours of their (doctors) time.  

Suki currently focuses on documentation but has the potential to expand its usage to data queries, ordering, prescribing and billing.  According to a white paper published by Suki, using its technology increases the time a doctor spends with a patient by 12% by cutting note taking time by 76%.  The time which is saved also brings in a financial benefit of $30,000 more in revenue a year on average for doctors.  

Suki raised a $ 20 million Series B round from Flare Capital Partners, First Round Capital, and Venrock, doubling its total funding to $ 40 million since its 2017 launch.  Suki is also looking to expand its reach in India and has decided to establish Bangalore as their base of operations.  India holds a lot of potential for Suki considering the amount of manual work which goes into almost any sector.  

It would be interesting to watch how Suki and other similar AI based startups would transform healthcare across the world.

Continue Reading

Latest News

Leher Versus Clubhouse: Which Audio Listening Startup Would You Choose?

Published

on

Leher Versus Clubhouse: Which Audio Listening Startup Would You Choose?,Startup Stories,Leher App Vs Clubhouse App - Which Audio Listening Startup Do You Prefer,Leher Versus Clubhouse,Leher App Vs Clubhouse App,Leher App Versus Clubhouse App,Leher,Clubhouse,Clubhouse App,Leher App,Leher App Is an Indian Alternative to Clubhouse

Clubhouse is a new type of social networking platform which is an audio only platform.  This means every conversation takes place through audio where users speak to let their thoughts known.  Users can create and host rooms where speakers will talk about a particular topic.  Originating in the Silicon Valley, Clubhouse attracted some major names onto its platform like Elon Musk, Evan Williams, Reddit co founder Alexis Ohanian, former Y Combinator President Sam Altman, AngelList co founder Naval Ravikant, Ashton Kuthcer, Oprah Winfrey, Drake, Kevin Hart and many others are some of the influential personalities who are on Clubhouse.  There is however a catch as Clubhouse is currently limited to iOS.

Leher is an Indian made alternative to Clubhouse and is a similar audio sharing and listening startup.  Leher also has video support unlike Clubhouse and is also available for both Android and iOS.  However, Leher does not have the biggest names in the world on its platform but it does have significant micro influencers and is growing at a rapid pace.  Within 180 days of its beta version launch, the company claimed to have its users spend about 44 minutes every day and 250,000 minutes per month for live video sessions.

We at Startup Stories are curious to see which among Leher or Clubhouse would our readers choose to take part in a virtual discussion.  Please let us know your answer in the poll below.

Which Audio Listening Startup Would You Choose?

Continue Reading

Latest News

Facebook Launches BARS For Creating Raps To Counter TikTok’s Growing Popularity

Published

on

Facebook Launches BARS For Creating Raps To Counter TikTok’s Growing Popularity

Facebook is leaving no stone unturned to tackle the surging popularity of the Chinese video making app TikTok.  As part of its redoubled efforts Facebook is launching a new app named BARS which could be used to create and share raps.  The core idea behind the app is rappers could focus on creating content without having to worry about investing heavily in production and equipment.

Facebook said, “Audio production tools can be complicated, expensive and difficult to use. With BARS, you can select one of our professionally-created beats, write lyrics and record yourself dropping bars (sic.)”  The company also added, “BARS auto-suggests rhymes as you’re writing to keep your flow going.  You can also jump into Challenge mode and freestyle with auto-suggested word cues.  Choose from a variety of audio and visual filters to take your creations to the next level (sic.)” 

The app is now available in the Apple App Store in the United States of America.  The invites for using BARS would be sent out in batches beginning in the USA and then expanded worldwide.  

This would be the second app which Facebook is launching to counter TikTok’s growing popularity.  Instagram Reels was the latest offering from the photo sharing platform Instagram (owned by Facebook) and was launched as a replacement for the video sharing application TikTok.  TikTok was enjoying an unrivalled popularity in India as it became a means to keep boredom at bay during the nationwide lockdown which was imposed in light of the COVID-19 virus. However, the Indian government announced that it would ban 59 Chinese applications in which TikTok was one, along with WeChat, Helo, Cam Scanner and many others.  This left a sudden void in video making applications, and Instagram realised the need for urgency to capitalize on this void.  Therefore, Instagram immediately pushed their latest feature Instagram Reels which lets its users create 15 second videos with music from Instagram’s database.  These videos look very similar to the ones made on TikTok and has gained a lot of popularity in India where Tik Tok continues to be banned.

ALSO READ: 4 Things To Know About Instagram Reels

Google also took advantage of the Indian Government’s ban of the viral application TikTok.  Google introduced a new feature on YouTube called YouTube Shorts.  The feature for all intents and purposes mimics the same features TikTok used to provide.  The new feature mimics many of TikTok’s most popular features, allowing users to make and post 15 second videos with built in creative tools encouraging them to add licensed music and more.

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Recent Posts

Advertisement