A few months ago, it looked like all the pieces had fallen into place for a hot secondaries summer: Buyers were coming back to market, some companies and sellers were getting desperate, and the bid-ask spread — the difference of what buyers are willing to pay and the price sellers are setting — was tightening.
Tiger Global’s recent secondary deal, in which it sold its stake in Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart to Walmart for $1.4 billion, shows that the market has started moving. But this transaction shouldn’t be taken as a bellwether of what’s ahead for venture’s secondary market this year.
To recap, Walmart is already a majority shareholder in Flipkart, and this new deal valued the online marketplace at $35 billion, a minor 7% valuation haircut from its last publicly announced valuation of $37.6 billion.
Tiger Global had invested a …
