Snapdeal is an Indian e-commerce company based in New Delhi, India. The company was started by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal in February 2010. As of 2014 Snapdeal had 300,000 sellers, over 30 million products across 800+ diverse categories from over 125,000 regional, national, and international brands and retailers and a reach of 6,000 towns and cities across the country.
Investors in the company include SoftBank Corp, Ru-Net Holdings, Tybourne Capital, PremjiInvest, Alibaba Group, Temasek Holdings, Bessemer Venture Partners, IndoUS Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Saama Capital, Foxconn Technology Group, Blackrock, eBay, Nexus Ventures, Intel Capital, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Singapore-based investment entity Brother Fortune Apparel and Ratan Tata. Snapdeal acquired FreeCharge for $400 million.
Video Snapdeal
History
Snapdeal was started on 4 February 2010 as a daily deals platform, but expanded in September 2011 to become an online marketplace. Snapdeal has grown to become one of the largest online marketplace in India offering an assortment of 10 million products across diverse categories from over 100,000 sellers, shipping to more than 5,000 towns and cities in India. In March 2015, Snapdeal brought actor Aamir Khan for the promotion of its website in India.In October 2017, According to the reported, Snapdeal's CFO Anup Vikal resigned.
Maps Snapdeal
Funding
Snapdeal has received several rounds of funding. It received its first funding worth USD $12 million from Nexus Venture Partners and Indo-US Venture Partners in January 2011. This was followed by another round in July 2011 worth USD $45 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and existing investors. The third round of funding was worth USD $50 million and came from eBay and other pre-existing investors.
Three years later, in February 2014, Snapdeal raised funding of USD $133 million. This round was led by eBay with participation from then-current institutional investors: Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Saama Capital. In May of the same year, funding worth USD $105 million was raised. This was backed by investors BlackRock, Temasek Holdings, PremjiInvest and others. Softbank invested USD $647 million in October 2014, making it the largest investor in Snapdeal so far.
In August 2015, Alibaba Group, Foxconn and SoftBank invested USD $500 million as fresh capital. In February of the following year, one of the world's largest pension funds, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, and Singapore-based investment entity Brother Fortune Apparel, led an investment worth USD $200 million in the Jasper Infotech-owned company.
In May 2017, Snapdeal raised funding worth Rs 113 crore funding from Nexus Venture Partners.
Acquisition
Snapdeal has acquired several business enterprises. In June 2011, the online marketplace acquired Bengaluru-based group buying website, Grabbon.com. In April 2012, Delhi-based online sports goods retailer, esportsbuy.com, was acquired. This was followed by the acquisition of Shopo.in, an online marketplace for Indian handicraft products. In April 2014, fashion products discovery site, Doozton.com was acquired. Gifting recommendation site, Wishpicker.com was acquired in December of the same year.
Snapdeal made majority of its acquisitions in the year 2015. In January, it acquired a stake in product comparison website, Smartprix.com followed by the acquisition of luxury fashion products discovery site, Exclusively.in. In March, the firm acquired 20% stake in logistics service company Gojavas.com. Two more acquisitions in the same month were eCommerce management software and fulfillment solution provider, Unicommerce.com and RupeePower, a digital platform for financial transactions. In April 2015, mobile-payments company FreeCharge.com was acquired. Programmatic display advertising platform, Reduce Data was acquired in September of the same year.
In August 2016, logistics firm Pigeon Express acquired a 51% stake in GoJavas with Snapdeal holding 49% stake in the firm.
Merger
In August 2016, rumors surfaced through a VCCircle exclusive article that Snapdeal was considering possibilities of mergers with its bigger rivals Flipkart and Amazon. However, no confirmation has yet been given with Snapdeal vehemently denying the claims. Although there is a possibility of acquisition of Snapdeal by Flipkart, the company may have to deal with the Reserve Bank of India rules on Foreign Exchange to protect the interest of Snapdeal shareholders.
The speculations about a possible merge became more concrete in April 2017 when a number of media houses reported that Softbank, one of the major investors in Snapdeal, wanted the company to merge with Flipkart. The merger discussions went on for a number of months as the Snapdeal board negotiated this merger with Flipkart.
Amid the acquisition discussions, Freecharge, a mobile payments company bought by Snapdeal in April 2015, was sold to Axis Bank for $60 million. Freecharge was originally acquired by Snapdeal for $400 million making it one of the biggest acquisitions in Indian startup space.
Business results
In the year 2012-13, Snapdeal had said that it expected revenues of about INR600 crore (US$94 million). Betting big on the growth of mobile commerce, Kunal Bahl, the CEO, said at the time that 15-20 per cent of the sales on Snapdeal came through m-commerce. Snapdeal.com expected the total sale of products traded on its platform to cross INR2,000 crore (US$310 million) in the fiscal year 2013-14 helped by its robust growth in the past two years and the growing popularity of e-commerce in India. In June 2014, Snapdeal announced that it had achieved the milestone of 1000 sellers its platform getting sales of over Rs 1 crore. Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd led Snapdeal registered a revenue growth of 56% to Rs 1,457 crore from Rs 933 crore, but incurred 150% increase in loss from Rs 1,328 crore in the year ended 31 March 2016 The year-to-March 2016 numbers includes the financials of digital payments platform Freecharge, which was acquired by Snapdeal in April 2015
Labour issues
Snapdeal employees approached the Labour Department in February 2016, claiming that the company was firing them and had forced 600 employees to resign in the last one year.
After protests from Snapdeal employees, Delhi Government ordered the Labour Department to probe the allegations.
Aamir Khan controversy
Snapdeal was criticized for Aamir Khan's statement during a conversation with Anant Goenka, Wholetime Director & Head -- New Media, The Indian Express, at the eighth edition of the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards. Snapdeal terminated Aamir Khan as a brand ambassador in February 2016 after an official statement released in response to the controversy. Aamir Khan had been hired as Snapdeal's brand ambassador in February 2015 for its "Diwali Dil Ki Deal-wali" campaign.
See also
- E-commerce in India
- Online shopping
References
External links
- Official website
- How Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal created the country's biggest online marketplace
Source of article : Wikipedia
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