Indirect investment

20 December 2017 By Una Galani Follow @ugalani

Amazon’s arch-enemy Flipkart has good reason to snub Mumbai and head to New York for an IPO in 2018. Its biggest global peers are listed stateside. With SoftBank and Alibaba as backers, the $12 bln retailer is primed to take its local fight against Jeff Bezos to global investors.

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Some early Flipkart investors, employees and ex-employees are selling their shares in the Indian e-commerce firm as part of a $2.5 billion investment deal agreed with Japan's SoftBank Group, Reuters reported on Nov. 30, citing two people familiar with the matter.

In August, Flipkart said SoftBank's Vision Fund, the world's biggest private-equity fund, had committed to the deal, giving the Bengaluru-headquartered online retailer greater firepower to compete with Amazon.com.

U.S. hedge fund Tiger Global is selling roughly $450 million of shares, having invested about $1 billion over the years, the person said.

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