Two weeks after the Walmart-Flipkart deal, SoftBank which was undecided about selling its stake in Flipkart has decided to sell its entire stake of over 20 per cent to Walmart.
The Japanese investor which has invested nearly $2.5 billion in Flipkart through its Vision Fund last year, is estimated to receive $4 billion for its investment.
SoftBank took time to arrive at a final decision in order to avoid the tax liability involving the sale of its stake. The company also wanted to wait to sell its stake until Flipkart’s valuations picked up further in the near future.
On May 9, hours before Walmart was scheduled to announce the Flipkart acquisition, SoftBank chief executive Masayoshi Son, during an investor call on his company’s earnings let the cat out of the bag. He said, Walmart had agreed to buy a controlling stake in the Indian e-commerce company.
Meanwhile, SoftBank, which has made sizeable investments of about $400 million in Paytm Mall and over $1 billion in its parent company One97 Communications, is reportedly in talks to invest another big chunk of millions of dollars into Paytm Mall, which is the third largest e-commerce firm in India which also counts Chinese giant Alibaba as one of its investors.
With this development, the country will see three large e-commerce firms – Walmart-Flipkart, Amazon and Alibaba-Paytm Mall take on each other to gain dominant share in the e-commerce market.