Ever since Sachin Bansal stepped out from his role at Flipkart, he has been busy exploring opportunities for his next entrepreneurship stint. His interest in the financial sector is reportedly leading him to evaluate the opening of a bank from scratch.
Starting A Bank
He is said to be in talks with experts from the financial background and also met a few executives at the Reserve Bank of India to understand regulations and eligibility criteria required to start a bank.
“Given the role that financial services play in the economy, it is one of the options we are looking at, it’s a business area we are exploring. At this stage, saying anything beyond that would be inappropriate … it would also be premature to talk about the hows and whys while we are still at an exploratory stage”, said Bansal as reported by ET.
Eligibility
The eligibility criteria to get a banking license as per RBI, including promoter having an equity value of a minimum 500 crore INR and also an experience of running a successful business for at least 10 years. Both these criterions are easily met by Sachin, as he has been in the business for over a decade and also recently cashed out $1 bn from Flipkart.
In December 2018, Bansal along with his friend and co-founder Ankit Agarwal registered BAC Acquisitions Pvt Ltd in Bengaluru to develop platforms to optimize business automation and computerization of processes across sectors.
Accessing the BAC Acquisitions filings highlight that the major objective of the company is “to acquire, maintain, develop, and make available information-technology-driven products for providing services of every kind including, commercial, data processing, data entry, customer relationship management, communication, data analysis, social, gaming, design, cloud computing or other services.”
Other Investments By Bansal
Bansal recently invested $7 Mn (INR 50 Cr) in the company taking its authorized share capital to INR 7,500 Cr ($1.05Bn).
Just earlier this week, Sachin Bansal announced his $92 Mn investment in cab giant Ola’s ongoing Series J round. Further, there is speculation about Bansal investing $50Mn–$100 Mn (INR 347 Cr- 695 Cr) in an electric vehicle startup Ather Energy.
As Sachin Bansal figures out his next play in the fintech sector, which is expected to reach $2.4 Bn by 2020, he continues to invest in other booming startups in the ecosystem.
