Online Marketplace Snapdeal Sellers Raise INR 50 Cr Through Its Capital Assist Initiative

The Delhi-based online marketplace, Snapdeal announced that it has helped more than 150 sellers on its platform to raise INR 50 Cr through Capital Assist.

Capital Assist is a Snapdeal initiative, launched last year to provide small merchants access to working capital. The firm has tied up with a number of banks and non-banking financial institutions (NBFCs) such as Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, RBL Bank, Religare and L&T Finance.

Speaking on the development, Akash Moondhra, Chief Financial Officer, Snapdeal said, “We realised that SMBs (small and medium businesses) in India face major hurdles in terms of meeting their working capital requirements and raising low cost capital while attempting to grow their business. Capital Assist was launched in order to help our sellers overcome this challenge and we have seen early success towards the launch of this service. Snapdeal aims to empower more than 1,000 sellers in the next one year through its platform, and plans are afoot to add financial partners.”

The online marketplace claims to receive a positive response from the funding partners and hope to extend the network to 25 banks and NBFCs by end of this year.

Snapdeal was founded in 2010 by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. The company claims to have 10 Mn+ products across 500+ diverse categories. With over 40 million members and seller base approaching 100,000 sellers, it offers delivery to 5000+ cities and towns in India. Snapdeal’s investors include eBay, BlackRock, Ratan Tata, PremjiInvest, Softbank and hedge funds Myriad Asset Management and Tybourne Capital.

Earlier in October last year, the firm had raised around $627 Mn from Japan’s SoftBank, at a valuation of $1.8 Bn. According to the reports, Snapdeal is in talks with Alibaba to raise around $1 Bn in funding and aiming for a valuation of at least $5 Bn.