Amassing Fund
It has been a busy fortnight for Masayoshi Son, Chairman and Chief Executive of Soft-Bank Group Corp. He has recently launched a $100 billion fund to invest in technology segments such as artificial intelligence and robotics. So far, the Japanese billionaire has managed to raise $93 billion from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Apple and Qualcomm. In another major development in India, his company bought Kaalari Capital’s stake in e-commerce firm Snapdeal and managed to push the merger between Snapdeal and Flipkart, the latter India’s most wellfunded start-up. The deal between the two e-commerce giants had got stuck for a while due to disagreements among the stakeholders regarding the final settlement of Kalaari and Nexus Venture Partners, early-stage investors in Snapdeal. Son’s company has also pumped in $1.4 billion in digital wallet Paytm, its biggest investment so far in any Indian start-up.