Confirmed! Snapdeal Raises $133.77 Million Round 4 Funding From eBay & Others

Last year, we had reported that Snapdeal may get fresh round of funding from eBay. The news has been confirmed now as eBay led investors have infused fresh capital of $133.77 million into Snapdeal in a fresh round of funding into this ecommerce portal.

This is 4^th round of funding, previous being:

• Round 1: In January 2011, Snapdeal received a funding of $12 million from Nexus Venture Partners and Indo-US Venture Partners.
• Round 2: In July 2011, the company raised a further $45 million from Bessemer Venture Partners, along with existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and Indo-US Venture Partners.
• Round 3: Snapdeal then raised a 3rd round of funding worth $50 million from eBay and received participation from existing investors – i.e. Bessemer Venture Partners, Nexus Venture and IndoUS Venture Partners. With this round, Snapdeal has raised a total of $102 million of funding.
• Round 4: $133.77 million raised by eBay and existing partners: Existing investors Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Saama Capital.

After this funding, Snapdeal has raised a total of $235.77 million from its investors.

Snapdeal co-founder and chief executive Kunal Bahl said, “We see eBay’s second round of investment in Snapdeal as an endorsement of our strategy and progress. All our current institutional investors including Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Saama Capital have participated in this round as well which is a strong endorsement of our team,”

Indian eCommerce market is currently worth $3.1 billion, which is expected to grow to $22 billion by 2019; and going by the current market positions, the fight has now narrowed down to top 4 players: Naspers backed Flipkart which has till now raised over $541 million; Myntra who recently raised funding Premji Invest, eBay backed Snapdeal and Amazon India which is slowly navigating the labyrinth and complexities of Indian consumers. Interestingly, all these four portals are marketplaces (Myntra will be soon launching it), and other players such as Jabong and Homeshop18 would be watching this development very closely.

eBay, which has an Indian presence since 2005, has so far failed to make any significant inroads into the Indian eCommerce market. The bet which they have played on Snapdeal is infact a long term plan for them, as they are slowly raising their stakes in the portal.

The current investment could lead to an outright buyout of Snapdeal as well, as eBay has done in other global markets. In an interview to Re/Code, Devin Wenig, president of eBay Marketplaces has indicated that such scenario is not entirely impossible.