There is much back-thumping since Flipkart, the “Indian” e-commerce giant, has vaulted to a $37.6 billion valuation, with the company raising $3.6 billion in cash and Softbank re-entering the capital table. Quicksilver “nationalists” are applauding: “See, in less than three years, our homegrown e-commerce hero has created wealth of over $15 bn”. Oh no, what an ardh satya!
Yes, it’s true that Flipkart’s valuation has leapt from $22 bn in 2018, when it flipped out of the Indian founders, i.e., the Bansal boys’ hands, into American Walmart. Even then, excited “nationalists” had claimed that “$16 billion, the largest ever FDI, will flow into India”. But I had to bust that myth because $14 billion out of the $16 billion was Indian wealth that was drained out to America, China, Japan, and South Africa. Only a relatively paltry $2 billion made it to India.
Why? Because in our “nationalist” wisdom, we had unleashed our formidable “agencies” to investigate…