Fidelity slashes Flipkart’s valuation to $5.5 billion

Flipkart, India’s largest online marketplace, has seen further dip in its valuation to $5.5 billion. Fidelity mutual fund has valued the startup at $52.13 per share as of November’16. It is a 36.1% reduction from the earlier valuation of $81.55 per share at the end of August’16. Morgan Stanley mutual fund had already trimmed the valuation of Flipkart to $52.13 per share in Sept’16. Apart from the two large mutual funds, other mutual fund investors such as Rowe Price and Valic have also reduced Flipkart’s valuation in the past.

Flipkart has just gone through a change in top management. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, a former executive at Flipkart’s largest investor Tiger Global, has took over from Binny Bansal as the new CEO. Co-founder Binny Bansal moved to a new position as group CEO, and the other co-founder Sachin Bansal continues as executive chairman.

The firm has also been witnessing a series of top level exits in recent past. In the current week, two top level executives Ashish Agarwal and Hari Vasudev, both senior Vice Presidents of engineering, have resigned. Other recent exits include supply chain unit Ekart head Saikiran Krishnamurthy, product head Surojit Chatterjee, and chief marketing officer Samardeep Subandh.