A Partnership To Transform Lives In India

We started Snapdeal with the vision to create life changing experiences for our buyers and sellers. Today, I am happy we impact more than half a million lives daily across our sellers, logistics partners, buyers, and other ecosystem participants; we have come a long way from Snapdeal’s initial days when we used to anxiously wait for an order to come in to the current state where we enable seamless transactions for our millions of customers and over 150 thousand sellers.

Today, Snapdeal has over 15 Mn listed products, serves customers in 5000+ towns across the country and is the shopping destination of choice for Indians. Our partner companies and platforms like Freecharge, Shopo, GoJavas, RupeePower, Capital Assist, Exclusively, are creating massive aggregate impact in their own way.

While we feel extremely proud about the change we have been able to bring about in the last 5 years; it only motivates us to push ourselves harder to achieve our vision and have a greater impact on the country.

I’m extremely happy to share that the Alibaba Group and Foxconn have decided to partner Snapdeal in its vision by investing in the company. Our current investors Softbank, Temasek, BlackRock, Myriad and Premji Invest demonstrated their continued support and also participated in this round.

Alibaba has transformed the lives of millions of people in China; their expertise and guidance would enable us to achieve our vision much earlier and more efficiently. Increased collaboration between Alibaba and Snapdeal would help us create bigger better opportunities for our users. It is quite a nostalgic moment for us at Snapdeal, given our original inspiration when we decided to do a big pivot in the business 3 years ago, was Alibaba. We have a lot to thank them for.

Foxconn is the $140 Bn global manufacturing bellwether and is very bullish on India. They truly imbibe the ‘Make in India’ spirit and have initiated plans to set-up multiple manufacturing units in different parts of the country. Foxconn’s manufacturing prowess and Snapdeal’s user focus form a formidable partnership. We have already started selling Infocus phones exclusively in India which is a Foxconn company and there are many others on the way. We will pioneer with Foxconn, an innovative ‘factory to home’ supply chain model to reduce costs and improve price efficiency for consumers and contribute to the nation’s Make in India initiatives.

I’m deeply humbled and want to take this opportunity to thank Alibaba and Foxconn in making us a part of their launch story in India.

Legends like Jack and Terry have an aura around them. I was already in awe of them and admired the way they built their organizations – my meetings with them only re-imposed my conviction. The passion and energy they have is infectious and inspiring at the same time. There is a lot we can learn from them and their teams as we build one India’s most impactful companies.

 

While the strategic guidance and synergies are invaluable, the financial infusion would enable Snapdeal further invest in building various differentiating capabilities. We at Snapdeal, aspire to serve a billion customers and empower millions of small businesses thru our platform in near future. This will be done via investments in people, technology, logistics infrastructure, payments, and other key capabilities which will define how big an impact we can have on India. This partnership is a significant endorsement of Snapdeal’s strategy and commitment to creating life changing experiences for the participants in its ecosystem in India.

With global leaders like Alibaba, Foxconn and SoftBank, in addition to our other existing partners, supporting us, our efforts towards building India’s most impactful digital commerce ecosystem will be propelled further, enabling us to contribute towards creating a Digital India.

[Originally published on LinkedIn]