Sachin Bansal puts Rs 888 cr in investment vehicle, renames it Navi Tech

Since exiting Flipkart last year, he has invested in start-ups, including Ola, Ather, Vogo, privately and through his investment vehicle BAC Acquisitions

Billionaire entrepreneur Sachin Bansal has infused more money into his investment vehicle BAC Acquisitions and renamed it Navi Technologies, company filings reveal.

The Flipkart co-founder has invested Rs 888.50 crore, approximately $123 million, in Navi Technologies, which was set up as BAC Acquisitions in December 2018.

Documents from the Registrar of Companies sourced through Tofler show Bansal bought 68.3 million shares at Rs 130 apiece over two tranches in October. Of these, 11.5 million shares were bought with cash (approximately Rs 150 crore), which comes as fresh infusion in the company. The rest were issued against financial securities, according to the documents.

"The funds have been infused in Navi Technologies to enable the company to scout for growth opportunities, organic and inorganic, in the broad financial sector space. With funds in the balance sheet, Navi Technologies will be able to move quickly to capture opportunities as they arise," said a spokesperson of Sachin Bansal, in an emailed response.

The development comes close on the heels of Bansal buying a microfinance, which he now leads.

In September, he announced his second innings as an entrepreneur by buying majority shares in Chaitanya Rural Intermediation Development Services, which runs the microfinance institution, Chaitanya India Fin Credit. The company is 10 years old and headquartered in Bengaluru.

Bansal invested $104 million for over 90 per cent ownership in Chaitanya India, which caters to low-income borrowers for vehicle finance, housing loans, small business loans, and education loans. He is now its chief executive officer.

After exiting Flipkart in May 2018, Bansal has been an active investor in the start-up ecosystem.

He set up BAC Acquisitions with his Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D) batchmate Ankit Agarwal to invest in start-ups through a mix of equity and debt. Company filings show Navi Technologies has three directors: Sachin Bansal, Ankit Agarwal, and Shubham Shrivastava.

Through BAC (now Navi Technologies), he made debt investments in a variety of ventures like Vogo, Bounce, and Kissht, and financing firms Altica Capital and Indostar Capital Finance. His biggest bet is Ola, where he committed to invest $100 million in January.

A source close to the deal said the equity investment is around $25 million, while the rest is structured debt. Ather Energy, the electric scooter start-up, is another substantial investment where he has put in close to $35 million. He has over a dozen angel investments from his time at Flipkart and beyond.

Bansal, along with Flipkart’s other co-founder Binny Bansal, is also an investor in a recently announced endowment fund of IIT-D. The two executives have committed 50 per cent of Rs 250 crore, which is the size of the fund.

Binny has also made a slew of start-up bets recently, including Mobikon, Acko Insurance, Niramai, among others.

Bansal made reportedly $1 billion from selling his shares in Flipkart, which was acquired by US retail giant Walmart Inc at a valuation $20 million, last year. He has since been deploying this capital in funding new ventures.

For now, Navi Technologies is Bansal’s primary investment vehicle. According to company filings, in the first four months of operations in 2018-19, it made Rs 16.7 crore in revenue and Rs 1.93 crore in profit.