Binny Bansal

Binny Bansal (born 1982/1983) is an Indian billionaire Internet entrepreneur. As of February 2024, his net worth was estimated at US$1.4 billion. In 2007 he co-founded the e-commerce platform Flipkart. He was the chief operating officer until January 2016, when he was promoted to chief executive officer (CEO). In January 2017 he was promoted to group CEO, then resigned in November 2018 due to personal misconduct allegations of Flipkart. He is an anchor investor in the venture firm 021 Capital. In 2019, Bansal invested in the endowment fund of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

Early life
Binny Bansal was born around 1982/1983. His father was a chief manager at a bank and his mother is in the government sector. He is originally from Chandigarh, the capital city of Punjab and Haryana. He was educated at St. Anne's Convent School, Chandigarh. He studied software programming at IIT Delhi. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi with a degree in computer science and engineering.

Amazon
After college, he worked at Sarnoff Corporation, and then in January 2007 he joined Amazon as a software engineer.

Early in his career, Binny was employed by Amazon for nine months, and before that, he had been rejected by Google twice. he quit Amazon to co-found Flipkart.

Founding Flipkart
In 2007 he co-founded the e-commerce platform Flipkart. His business partner, Sachin Bansal, unrelated, also came from Chandigarh, and had been a fellow student at IIT Delhi, studying computer science engineering.

He and his co-founder pooled $6000 for startup costs and started operating out of their apartment.

Before co-founding Flipkart, Binny Bansal and his business partner Sachin Bansal initially thought of starting a comparison search engine but realized that the market for E-commerce in India was very small. Hence, after leaving Amazon in 2007, they founded Flipkart as an e-commerce company. Before joining Amazon, Binny had worked with Sarnoff Corporation for a year and a half, where he developed a lane sensor device for cars which would warn you and beep automatically if you changed lanes without giving a signal.

CEO of Flipkart
He served as the chief operating officer until 11 January 2016, when he was promoted to chief executive officer (CEO).

In 2016, Binny Bansal became the CEO of Flipkart, where he worked on strategic development, direction and business management.

In 2017, he assumed the role of CEO of Flipkart Group and his previous position was handed to Kalyan Krishnamurthy.

In 2018, Walmart acquired a 77% stake in the Flipkart Group. After the acquisition, Binny Bansal assumed the role of chairman and continued as Group CEO. His 5.5% stake in Flipkart was valued at $1 billion after the acquisition.

He resigned from Flipkart in November 2018 on allegations of personal misconduct. According to the Wall Street Journal, a Walmart investigation failed to find evidence to corroborate sexual assault claims against him but revealed "other poor judgement calls" in how he had handled what he termed a consensual affair with a former Flipkart employee in 2016.

Binny Bansal resigned from the executive team on 28 January 2024, and has completely divested his stake. In the last year, Binny, along with Excel and Tiger Global Management, sold their entire stake to Walmart, resulting in Binny earning $1.5 billion. Walmart acquired a 77% stake in Flipkart for $16 billion in May 2018.

Investing
He is currently an anchor investor in the venture firm 021 Capital which focuses on investing in the fields of biotechnology, agritech, and the internet.

He is also an angel investor in multiple startups, including BrightCHAMPS, Virgio, Flash, Hire Quotient and Glints.

In 2019, he invested 125 crores in the endowment fund of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

He also helped back about 47 companies so far spread across 64 funding rounds which include 28 deals in the seed stage, 14 in the early and 4 in late stage.

Awards and recognition
In September 2015, Binny Bansal along with Sachin Bansal, was named the 86th richest person in India with a net worth of $1.3 billion by Forbes India Rich List. Afterwards, India Today ranked him #26th along with Sachin Bansal in India's 50 Most powerful people of 2017 list.

Personal life
Bansal currently resides in Bangalore. He has twin sons with his wife Trisha Bansal, a homemaker.