The biggest investor in Flipkart – Tiger Global Management – is reported to have picked up 2.44 million shares in Amazon, Flipkart’s biggest rival in India. The move makes Amazon Tiger Global’s second-largest public holding company.
Investor conflicts in venture capital are not rare, with Tiger Global Management being one of the umpteen investors in Amazon. The firm is one of the most prolific e-commerce and tech investors in public and private markets around the world. At various points in time, Tiger has held stakes in China’s Alibaba Group Holdings and Facebook.
Chief Executive Officer of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, has plans to invest $2 billion in India, over a period to fulfill Amazon’s ambition of overtaking Flipkart and emerging as India’s largest ecommerce company. Flipkart currently holds the number one position in India, having raised over $2.5 billion since the past 18 months, with Tiger funding more than 1 billion.
Tiger Global Management was founded by Charles Coleman in New York as recently as 2001. It also has offices in Being, China and Mumbai, India. The firm has shown an annual return of 21% and currently manages $4.4 billion worth of assets.