Snapdeal founders now own less than 6.5% of the company
BENGALURU/NEW DELHI: Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal together own less than 6.5% of the company — an eloquent testimonial to the strain the online marketplace and its founders have had to bear to raise nearly $2 billion in funds over the past seven years.
Documents with the Registrar of Companies show that the founders, who together held about 8.5% in the company at the end of 2014, now hold just 6.3%.
Chief executive officer Bahl has 3.94%, while Bansal, the chief operating officer,has just 2.44% stake in the company.
The largest shareholder in Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt Ltd) is Japan’s Softbank Group, which holds close to 33%.
Other top investors include Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, eBay Inc., Foxconn Technology Group and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The shareholding pattern assumes 4.5% of Snapdeal stock that has been set aside for distribution under employee stock options.
Snapdeal co-founders seem to control less of their company than their peers. Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal still own 14-15% together; Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma controls roughly 20% of the payments platform; Ola co-founders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati own at least 10% of the cabhailing service.
Because of Snapdeal’s perennial status as an underdog, Bahl and Bansal have been forced to give up more of their company to bring in new investors.
It is a distant number three behind Flipkart and Amazon India, and has been struggling to hold on to its market share.
In August, Snapdeal received more than $21 million from Luxembourg-based firm Clouse SA as part of its previously announced funding round, documents available with the registrar of companies showed.
The round’s first installment of ₹335 crore was received by Snapdeal in February.