Mutual fund investor Valic Co. has trimmed the valuation of India’s most valuable start-up Flipkart, months after the e-commerce market leader raised nearly $3 billion from marquee investors led by Japan’s SoftBank, Tencent Holdings, eBay and Microsof.

The new valuation by Velic is an indication that some smaller investors in Flipkart are still divided over its valuation.

Valic, in its latest quarterly report, marked down Flipkart’s valuation slightly to about $7.9 billion—which is way below the $11.6 billion valuation at which Flipkart raised funds earlier this year.

In July, Flipkart was valued at $13.7 billionwhen US based investment firm Vanguard group has increased its stake in Flipkart to 64 percent.

In the previous quarter, Valic had valued Flipkart at roughly $8.5 billion. While technically Flipkart’s latest fundraising was a “down round” from its peak valuation of $15 billion, the fundraise was seen as a major victory for Flipkart, given its struggles in 2015 and the first half of 2016 when it made several strategic blunders and conceded significant market share to Amazon India.

For the three months ended 31 August, Valic valued each Flipkart share at $88.11, down from $94.27 in the previous quarter.

Related Reading - What Flipkart’s Devaluation Means For Indian Startups

Notably, Flipkart founders have repeatedly dismissed these kind of valuation markdowns and termed them as "theoretical exercises."

Prior to the latest markdown from Valic, Flipkart had faced aggressive markdowns from some mutual fund investors such as Fidelity and Morgan Stanley, which slashed Flipkart’s valuation no fewer than five consecutive times. In the three months to December, Morgan Stanley had marked down the value of its holdings in Flipkart for the fifth consecutive quarter, while Fidelity had slashed Flipkart’s valuation by over a third during the three-month period ended in November.
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