Sachin Bansal

Sachin Bansal (born August 5, 1981) is an Indian technology entrepreneur and an ardent, amateur gamer. He is best known as the co-founder of Flipkart that was acquired by Walmart (77 per cent stakes) at $16 billion in 2018. During his career at Flipkart that spanned 11 years, Bansal held the position of chief executive officer and Executive chairman. In 2018, Bansal exited Flipkart along with the Walmart deal.

In 2007, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (not related) founded Flipkart whose valuation in 2018 was $20.8 billion. In 2018, Bansal held 5.5 per cent stake in Flipkart, which he sold off to Walmart and his net worth then was a little over $1 billion. In May 2018, Bansal announced that after stepping down as the Executive Chairman of Flipkart, he would be focusing on pending personal projects, gaming and brushing up his coding skills.

Early life
Bansal was born in Chandigarh, India, on August 5, 1981. His father is a business man and mother is a homemaker. Bansal attended Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and graduated as a Computer Science engineer in 2005. During the course of his education, Bansal had considered giving up his engineering seat to pursue a career in gaming. Age of Empires and Quake III Arena are the games that he was playing in his early life. After graduation, Bansal worked at Techspan for a few months and later in 2006 he joined Amazon Web Services as a Senior Software Engineer. In 2007, Bansal quit Amazon to start his own venture.

Flipkart
In October 2007, Bansal and his co-founder, Binny Bansal, started an online bookstore, Flipkart, with an initial capital of ₹400,000 (US$5,600). For about 18 months they received ₹10,000 every month as allowance from their parents. They first started operating out of an apartment in Koramangala, in Bangalore, India. In the first few months, according to Bansal's own claims, he oversaw all business details, from building the first version of their website to sourcing book to packing and delivering them. From inception until 2016, Bansal held the position of chief executive officer and from 2016 until 2018, he held the position of Executive Chairman. In 2018, Bansal signed a non-compete clause with Walmart and exited Flipkart. The non-compete clause restricted Bansal from starting any business that directly or indirectly competed with Flipkart for 18 months and in making any investments in businesses competing with Flipkart for 36 months from his departure.

Post-Flipkart 
In December 2018, Bansal founded BAC Acquisitions Private Limited, a venture that focused on building and acquiring technology-driven businesses in diverse industry verticals. Since 2014, Bansal has made 18 investments in local, early-stage startups where the deal size was $1–2 million. In 2019, Bansal invested $100 million in Ola and received a stake holding of 0.37 per cent. In February 2019, he had investments in Ola, Grey Orange, Ather Energy, SigTuple, Inshorts, Unacademy and TeamIndus.

Recognition 
 In 2013, Bansal was awarded the Economic Times Award - 'Entrepreneur of the year'.
 In 2015, Bansal was named as the 86th richest person in India by Forbes India.
 In 2016, Time Magazine included Bansal and his co-founder in the 100 most influential people in the world list.
 In 2017, India Today included Bansal and his co-founder in India's 50 most powerful people list.

Personal life 
Sachin Bansal is married to Priya Bansal, a dentist by training and profession. They have one son.

References 

1981 births
Living people