Flipkart's Sachin Bansal may invest upto $100 million in Ather Energy

Sachin Bansal, Flipkart’s co-founder who minted close to a billion dollars after Walmart’s takeover of the e-commerce firm, is considering several large bets on start-ups.

As per a report, Bansal is in talks with electric scooter maker Ather Energy to invest $50-100 million. Sachin, and Binny Bansal, Flipkart's other co-founder, are the first investors in the company.

The duo is said to have introduced Ather to Flipkart's investor Lee Fixel of Tiger Global. Tiger, along with automobile maker Hero MotoCorp, invested Rs 2 billion in the company.

Founded by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras alumni Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, Ather is building its own line of electric scooters from ground up. The first dozen units were shipped only recently, including one that Sachin Bansal took home.
 

“We are in the midst of a fund-raise,” Tarun Mehta, founder and chief executive at Ather told Business Standard. He did not give specifics.

Sachin Bansal made several small investments when he was at Flipkart. Now, after stepping down, he is looking to focus on large investments.
 

Last week, The Economic Times reported Bansal may invest up to a $100 million in taxi firm Ola. 

Mehta said Ather is in the process of ramping up operations at its production and assembly facility at Whitefield, Bangalore. “Installed capacity (of the unit) isn’t a concern in the near term, the focus right now is to improve efficiency and make the process faster.” 

The company also wants to open more experience-cum-retail centres. It has only one currently in Bangalore.