SoftBank Vision Fund, one of the world’s largest private equity investment fund by Japan-based SoftBank Corp. is reportedly in talks with Flipkart to invest around ₹12,813 crore ($2 billion).
The move comes a day after Snapdeal officially announced that it is no longer interested in selling its business to Flipkart. Its noteworthy that SoftBank is the largest investor in Snapdeal.
SoftBank was pushing Snapdeal for the merger deal with Flipkart, which was seen as a way for the VC firm to own a stake in one of the leading eCommerce company in India. After the sale, SoftBank was going to invest in Flipkart and partially buy own Tiger Global, one of the largest investor in Flipkart.
As per the reports, the Japan-based venture capital firm is looking at putting between $1.5 billion and $2 billion into Flipkart in the upcoming two months. About half the money would go to Tiger Global Management, which wants to sell part of its Flipkart stake, while the rest of the funds would go to Flipkart.
Flipkart was valued at $11.6 billion in April after eBay, Tencent and Microsoft invested $1.4 billion. Further investment from the deep-pocketed Vision Fund would help the Indian company compete with Amazon India. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon has committed to invest at least $5 billion in its India operations.
The Vision Fund was founded by Masayoshi Son, chairman of SoftBank Group Corp., but it operates as a separate entity. The Japanese company has largely written off its investment in Snapdeal.