SoftBank invests $627 mn in Indian e-commerce firm Snapdeal

Japanese Telecom service provider SoftBank has invested $627 million in Indian e-commerce firm Snapdeal.

Existing investors of Snapdeal include BlackRock, Temasek, eBay, Premji Invest, Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Ratan Tata, among others.

The Japanese company, which has majority stake in American telecom service provider Sprint, did not reveal the size of the equity stake in Snapdeal.

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Founded in 2010, Snapdeal has more than 25 million registered users and more than 50,000 business sellers. Snapdeal competes with Flipkart, ebay, Amazon, etc.

SoftBank aims to further strengthen its presence in India and leverage synergies with its network of Internet companies around the world.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son

Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of SoftBank, said: “We believe India is at a turning point in its development and have confidence that India will grow strongly over the next decade. We intend to deploy significant capital in India over the next few years to support development of the market.”

As part of the deal, Nikesh Arora, vice chairman of SoftBank, who left Google recently, will join the board of Snapdeal.

“India has the third-largest Internet user base in the world, but a relatively small online market currently. With today’s announcement SoftBank is contributing to the development of the infrastructure for the digital future of India,” Arora said.

With over 25 million members and 50,000+ merchants, Snapdeal grew 600 percent from 2013 to 2014. More than 60 percent of its orders come from mobile phones.

Though SoftBank has more than 100 million mobile subscribers, the company is yet to explore the Indian telecom market dominated by operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, etc.

Baburajan K
[email protected]