Snapdeal receives ₹113 cr in emergency financing
BENGALURU: Struggling online marketplace Snapdeal has received ₹113 crore in an emergency financing round from existing investor Nexus Venture Partners and the company’s co-founders.
The financing round comes as a surprise. Snapdeal has been in talks to sell itself to bigger rival Flipkart amid a boardroom battle involving its three most powerful investors and its co-founders—Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.
Japanese technology and telecoms conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp, Snapdeal’s largest investor, is trying to engineer the sale after giving up on the online marketplace, which has lost out to rivals Flipkart and Amazon India in the e-commerce battle.
At the other corner are Nexus, Kalaari Capital and the Snapdeal co-founders, all of whom were initially opposed to the sale.
Nexus, one of Snapdeal’s earliest backers, put up ₹96.26 crore in the latest round, according to documents with the Registrar of Companies (RoC). Snapdeal CEO Bahl and COO Bansal contributed ₹8.45 crore each, the documents show.
Mint reported on April 28 that Snapdeal then had cash reserves left for less than four months.
It’s not yet clear how the latest financing round, which increases Snapdeal’s runway by a few months, will affect the company’s talks with Flipkart.
Snapdeal, Nexus, SoftBank as well as Flipkart didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.