South Park Commons enters India in collaboration with Binny Bansal

In collaboration with Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart, the early-stage fund will provide a supportive environment for India's most talented founders

South Park Commons (SPC), the Silicon Valley-based technical community and early-stage venture fund, announced the opening of its first international location in Bengaluru, India. In collaboration with Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart, SPC-India will provide a supportive environment for India's most talented founders, technologists, and researchers to navigate the -1 to 0 stage of their careers—the stage when their primary task is figuring out what to work on next.

“I'm passionate about helping founders in various stages of their journey. What we are working on here is inspiring more founders in India and helping them navigate the journey from -1 to 0 phase,” said Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, during a media roundtable. “I'm going to be involved in everything, especially in India, including helping build the team, mentoring the founders, and bringing other founders into the network.”

 

Earlier this year, Binny Bansal officially exited the board of the Walmart-owned e-commerce firm Flipkart, which he founded along with Sachin Bansal 16 years ago. The move came months after he sold his remaining stake in the firm. Binny Bansal recently also floated his new startup, OppDoor, to provide end-to-end solutions to e-commerce firms.

In 2018, when US retail giant Walmart invested $16 billion for a majority stake in Flipkart, the Bengaluru-based firm was valued at less than $21 billion. This not only made the founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal billionaires but also provided blockbuster exits to the investors.

“We will leverage the entire startup ecosystem and network of founders to support SPC,” said Bansal. “SPC’s focus on the intersection of the -1 to 0 journey and frontier technologies differentiates it compared to what others are doing. The focus here is on technologists dreaming of building something and helping them to get started and try things out. Something like that doesn’t exist,” added Bansal.

Founded in 2015 by Ruchi Sanghvi, the first female engineer at Facebook and former VP of Operations at Dropbox, SPC has become the top destination for technical founders seeking support during the earliest stages of their startup journey. Ruchi was joined by Aditya Agarwal, former CTO of Dropbox, with the founding of the SPC Fund in 2018.

“There are tons of macro tailwinds for India. The way the global economy is realigning itself, I think India will be one of the biggest beneficiaries. The next decade-plus is going to be a story of the Indian economy,” said Aditya Agarwal, during a media roundtable. “The Indian startup ecosystem has matured to the point that it can sustain the incredible talent density that makes SPC work. Founders don't have to move to the US to build world-class, category-creating companies,” added Agarwal.

The decision to expand to Bengaluru comes at a pivotal moment for the Indian economy. With an impressive 8.2 per cent GDP (gross domestic product) growth in the last year, over 820 million internet users, and more than 100 tech unicorns, India has solidified its position as a global tech powerhouse. The SPC model requires a critical mass of world-class technical talent, seasoned operators from successful local companies, and a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem. Bengaluru has all the ingredients to become the next leading technology hub. SPC will add its -1 to 0 approach to the next stage of India’s growth.

“SPC supports founders when they are most vulnerable when they take the plunge to start a company. We are excited to bring together the most talented technical founders in Bengaluru and help them find their life’s work,” said Ruchi Sanghvi. “The first step for us is going to be hiring the team on the ground and the partners on the ground. Also, there is a world-class AI community here in India. We want to bridge the gap between the AI community here in India and San Francisco and I think we're uniquely positioned to be able to do that,” added Sanghvi.

SPC-India will build on the community's reputation as a top destination for early-stage AI (artificial intelligence) researchers and founders. The earliest members of SPC included future founders from companies like Anthropic and Imbue, as well as early engineers from OpenAI. SPC aims to replicate this emphasis in India.

“We're not just another incubator or accelerator. There are plenty of them out there. Our mission is to allow people to tackle wildly ambitious ideas. Success for us looks like being able to take talented people and expand their horizons to tackle way bigger things than they thought when they first joined SPC. I think that there is a whole generation of Indian technology entrepreneurs that want that,” said Agarwal. “We created 150 companies out of SPC over the last eight years. We have raised a total of about $1.5 billion with a collective valuation of over $40 billion and 98 per cent of our companies are still alive, which is quite remarkable. I hope those numbers will pale in comparison to what we can achieve here over the next 10 years.”

Initially, SPC is looking to onboard a community of 10-15 top technologists from India who are in the -1 to 0 phase. It also plans to hire a couple of partners who would help lead SPC in the country. SPC also plans to raise an India-specific fund.

“We are seeing a large amount of interest from both domestic as well as international LPs (limited partners) to participate in our model,” said Agarwal.