Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy turns active in Indian start-up space

Since 2016, former Tiger Global's Kalyan Krishnamurthy has invested in seven start-ups; more in the offing

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Flipkart, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, has had two stints at the e-commerce major. First, in May 2013, when he joined as the interim sales and finance head. Second innings started June 2016.

Prior to this and between these stints, Krishnamurthy, an alumnus of the Asian Institute of Management, Philippines, was managing the investments for global investment major Tiger Global Management in varied roles, closely working with portfolio companies. Now at the helm of the Walmart-owned e-commerce major in India, Krishnamurthy is still an astute investor at heart.

Following in the footsteps of his predecessors at Flipkart, co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal and few other successful CEOs-turned investors, Krishnamurthy is also emerging as one of the active investors and believers in the Indian start-up ecosystem. 

According to the data collated by Paper.vc, a business intelligence platform, he has so far invested across seven start-ups belonging to sectors such as healthtech, education, and e-commerce. Even though the cumulative fund he has put in at Rs 7-8 crore is not that enormous from an investment point of view, the investee companies, according to sources in the know, are mostly looking at him as a mentor to leverage his business acumen.

Krishnamurthy made his first solo investment of around Rs 1 crore in the learning platform Unacademy in early 2016, which was followed by Rs 60 lakh in Goodera, a technology platform that helps companies achieve business goals by maximising corporate social responsibility impact. 

The next one came in 2018, when he invested in fitness firm CureFit that was founded by two of his former colleagues at Flipkart, Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori. This was followed by small investments in online home rental start-up NestAway, B9 Beverages, which manufactures craft beer brand Bira 91. In the ongoing year, he has also invested in business-to-business e-commerce firm Moglix and home services start-up UrbanClap, in quick succession.

In some cases, Krishnamurthy has been allotted equity shares, instead of preferential shares, which is the norm, or has been assigned shares at a discount, an analysis of his investments shows. “Our portfolio tracker shows that Krishnamurthy has paid the highest premium to date for shares in UrbanClap — over and above CureFit, Bira 91, and NestAway. In terms of ticket size too, this is the second highest investment after Bira 91,” said Vivek Durai, the founder at Paper.vc. 

In a maturing start-up ecosystem, a number of founders, corporate honchos, and industrial scions are putting their personal wealth in new-generation companies — not just as an asset, but to get a feel of new-age companies and business areas. 

The growing list includes Sanjeev Bikhchandani of Info Edge, Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Freshworks, and even Rajan Anandan, former Google India head, who recently joined Sequoia Capital as a venture capitalist. Others like Ratan Tata and Mohandas Pai have set up family offices for start-up investing.

As an angel investor, what differentiates Krishnamurthy from the lot is that his investments are in start-ups that are at a mature stage, typically ones past Series B or Series C rounds of fundraising, and are the market leaders, or at best no. 2, in their category or segment. 

“He’s looking to pick category winners across verticals. I don’t see a common thread between the companies, but they all are promising high-growth sectors,” said an M&A analyst with a leading consultancy firm.

Krishnamurthy will advise and mentor start-ups on need basis, and will look to be “at the thick of it” — innovation and start-up activity — through his bets, according to observers. 

“It is very natural for people who have been in the start-up ecosystem, here as well as abroad, to become angels and super angels,” said K Ganesh, a serial entrepreneur and angel investor in over 25 companies. 

“Angel investment, as an asset class, is coming of age in India. For an investor, it keeps the adrenaline flowing, the brain cells working; it is vicariously living the entrepreneurial life,” added Ganesh.

Some pointed to the fact that more investments by Krishnamurthy may be in the offing, as Flipkart’s management is now being assisted by Walmart, leaving him more time to review the ecosystem. Walmart bought 77 per cent stake in Flipkart in May 2018.