Chinese technology major Tencent has bought a stake worth $264 million (Rs 2,060 crore) in Walmart-owned Flipkart from co-founder Binny Bansal, through its European subsidiary, according to a news item first broken by news agency PTI.

Binny Bansal holds around 1.84% stake in Flipkart after selling part of his stake to Tencent Cloud Europe BV. The transaction was completed on October 26, 2021 and was shared with government authorities at the beginning of the current financial year, the news report stated.

Post the transaction, Tencent’s arm holds 0.72% stake in Flipkart, which is valued at around $264 million, as per the last valuation of $37.6 billion disclosed by the e-commerce firm in July 2021.

Flipkart had raised $3.6 billion that time in a funding round led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, CPP Investments, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Walmart.

A slew of investors like DisruptAD, Qatar Investment Authority, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, Tencent, Willoughby Capital, Antara Capital, Franklin Templeton and Tiger Global also participated in that round.

Sources said the transaction took place in Singapore but Flipkart informed Indian authorities about it as a responsible entity, and that the transaction does not fall under the purview of ‘Press Note 3’, which calls for scrutiny of investment that any Indian company gets from countries sharing land borders with India.

While there are several companies operating in India in which Tencent has made investments, the government has banned some gaming apps including PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite, which were published by Tencent Group. E-mail queries sent to Flipkart and Bansal did not elicit any reply, according to the PTI report.