Is Ratan Tata Looking To Invest In Snapdeal?

The lucrative ecommerce market has now become hot topic of discussion these days, be it either sales, funding or even shut downs. In a recent development, there are rumors surfacing in media that 76-year-old chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, Rata Tatan is looking to invest in ecommerce marketplace Snapdeal. If we go by market speculations, Snapdeal.com, has recently asked its financial advisor Credit Suisse to scout for $300 Mn from private equity investors.

There is no doubt that raising funds would be the immediate plan of action for Snapdeal due to the increasing competition and obviously because of its competitors raising funds for fueling expansion.

Recently Flipkart had raised $1Bn and Amazon has invested $2 Bn for its Indian expansion.

While there has been no confirmation from either of the two, but as per the sources close to the development Ratan Tata may buy out an early investor in Snapdeal through a secondary sale and is expected to be a minority investor in his personal capacity in Snapdeal.

A report in TOI states that Tata had visited the firm’s headquarters in Delhi about a month ago and addressed employees.

Snapdeal has already raised about $233 Mn two rounds of funding so far this year, taking total capital raised to about $350 Mn.

Snapdeal’s existing investors include San Jose- based eBay Inc, Singapore’s Temasek, BlackRock, PremjiInvest, Intel, Nexus Venture Partners, NEA-IndoUS Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.

The increasing competition, existence of number of players and investors pouring huge funds in ecommerce firms simply suggests how ecommerce is going to boom in the coming time in the country. Each and every player now working to introduce new services, features etc. to remain one step ahead. After Amazon’s initiatives of next-day and same day delivery and Flipkart’s scheduled delivery in a recent development, Shopclues has deployed a Decision Support System (DSS) at the back-end that enables the automatic selection of the most suitable courier partner for delivering a product. Not only in the context of services, but all three are now getting pretty serious about mergers and acquisitions.

In a recent development, Snapdeal has roped in Abhishek Kumar of Palaash Ventures to look after M&As and investments looking at that Flipkart has got former venture capitalist Nishant Verman, earlier an associate in the Delhi office of Silicon Valley venture firm Canaan Partners to lead the charge of acquiring companies and also invest in startups. In a similar development, Amazon has got Abhijeet Muzumdar, former vice-president at Bessemer Venture Partners, to lead its corporate development function.

India’s online retail industry estimated to reach INR 50,000 Cr by 2016.