Amitabh Bachchan bets big on cryptocurrency: Rs 1.6 crore invested in Ziddu swells to Rs 112 crore in over two years

It seems mega star Amitabh Bachchan has turned into a smart investor after shining on the silver screen for decades. The recent such move in the news is Bachchan’s 2015 investment in Meridian Tech Pte, a Singapore-based company founded by Venkata Srinivas Meenavalli. In May that year Amitabh Bachchan and his son Abhishek had invested $2,50,000 in the company which was not a well-known entity. Out of the total investment, the senior Bachchan came up with $1,50,000 and Abhishek $1,00,000, according a report in The Economic Times.
Bachchans had invested the money under the Authorised Liberalised Remittance scheme of the Reserve Bank of India. At that time, Ziddu was a cloud storage and e-distribution startup company.

Last week, LongFin Corp – another company promoted by Meenavalli – listed on Nasadaq stock exchange and two days after debuting on the US market, the company acquired Ziddu.com, which is reported to be a prime asset of Meridian.

The Ziddu website says: “We are a blockchain research company developing decentralised application for micro-lending and warehouse financing. Ziddu Warehouse Coin is powered by Ethereum ERC20 token standard.”

LongFin in a press statement said Ziddu is into micro-lending segment and it loans money against warehouse receipts. Behind the stock frenzy is 'Ziddu Warehouse Coin', which the company communique says "is a smart contract that enables importers and exporters to use their Ziddu coins that are loosely pegged to Ethereum and Bitcoin Crypto Currency," according to the report.

Since its market debut, the value of LongFin Corp’s stocks has risen tremendously. From last Wednesday to this Friday, the stocks’ value has moved from 1,000 percent at one point to 2,500 percent at the other.

The Bachchans were given 2,50,000 shares in LongFin. "In lieu of their holding in Meridian Tech, Bachchans received 250,000 shares of LongFin following the asset purchase," Meenavalli has been quoted as saying in ET.

On Monday, the LongFin stock was trading at $70 a share. Going by the holding, the value of the Bachchan duo’s holding now equals $17.5 million, which at the current exchange rate is approximately Rs 114 crore, the ET report said.

Bachchan's last two big investments have given him huge returns compared to the money he has put in those bets. Back in 2013, his shrewd investor instincts gave him a 10,190 percent return on investment he made in JustDial, a local search engine company. Bachchan earned Rs 7 crore in just four months from an investment of just Rs 6.27 lakh. He had bought 62,794 shares of JustDial back then.