Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal’s personal investment vehicle BAC Acquisitions has scrapped a proposal to offer Rs 20 crore (around $2.8 million) in debt funding to micro-delivery startup Milkbasket.
The two parties said in a statement that the decision was mutual but did not cite a reason for the move.
Gurugram-based Milkbasket had on April 29 said it would raise debt funding from BAC Acquisitions and use the money to meet its expenditure requirements and drive research and development efforts.
Operated by Aaidea Solutions Pvt. Ltd, Milkbasket earlier this week raised nearly Rs 73 crore (around $10.5 million) in a fresh round of funding led by existing investor Unilever Ventures, the venture capital arm of consumer goods giant Unilever Plc. Other financial backers including Mayfield India, Kalaari Capital and Blume Ventures also participated in the round, Milkbasket had said.
Founded in 2015 by Anant Goel, Ashish Goel, Anurag Jain and Yatish Talvadia, Milkbasket says it fulfills the entire grocery needs of a household every day before 7am.
Unlike BigBasket, Grofers, Amazon and Flipkart -- the bigger players in the online grocery delivery market -- Milkbasket positions itself as the online version of local mom-and-pop grocery stores, only with more stock keeping units. The firm currently operates in Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad and Bengaluru.
In December last year, it raised $7 million in an extended Series A round led by US-based early- to growth-stage venture capital firm Mayfield. This was preceded by a $7 million Series A investment led by early-stage investment firm Kalaari Capital in May last year.
Sachin Bansal has made a number of investments in his new avatar and is fast emerging as one of the most prolific investors in startups. He has invested both debt and equity capital and pumped money in seed- and late-stage rounds.
BAC Acquisitions, set up six months after Bansal exited homegrown e-commerce firm Flipkart in May 2018, aims to invest across a diverse range of sectors including data sciences, healthcare, energy, media and entertainment, consumer goods, engineering, and retail.