SoftBank Vision Fund, is planning to invest directly in India’s Flipkart after the merger SoftBank-backed Snapdeal into Flipkart fell apart.
The ongoing discussions
The fund amount will range between $1.5 billion and $2 billion within the next two months. Half of the money will 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’s other investors
Flipkart was valued at $11.6 billion after EBay Inc., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Microsoft Corp. together invested $1.4 billion. Adding the investments from Vision Fund would help the Indian company to compete with its rival Amazon.com Inc.
About SoftBank’s investments
The Vision Fund was founded by Son, chairman of SoftBank Group Corp
SoftBank has been a keen supporter of e-commerce platforms. The company’s investments with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Started with $20 million. Now, the stake in the Chinese company is $100 million.