The fight for supremacy within Indian e Commerce world just got better as Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of $108 billion Tata Sons has invested in India’s second biggest eCommerce portal: Snapdeal.com.
Kunal Bahl, CEO of Snapdeal just shared this image on his Twitter profile, which says it all:
Total amount which has been invested hasn’t been made public yet, but industry veterans are speculating that this move by Ratan Tata can ignite a new wave of competition within the industry. Yesterday, we had reported that Tata Value Homes and Snapdeal have partnered to make affordable home bookings in five cities: Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
Earlier, we had reported that Ratan Tata may invest in Snapdeal on a personal basis; the news just got validated.
Snapdeal has witnessed 600% year on year growth since the last 2 years, and this recent development will surely help them to make their position even stronger. Their marketplace already hosts more than 50,000 sellers who are selling over 5 million products from 500 different categories. As of now, it has raised close to $400 million, out of which they have spent $100 million in logistics and operations to create inroads into $3 billion worth Indian eCommerce sector.
Things will certainly go better for Snapdeal from this point.
Why Ratan Tata Matters in Indian eCommerce?
No, it just isn’t the funding which matters here, as the investment has been made personally, and not by Tata Group. Although there is no official record of the capital which Ratan Tata personally owns, but some resources peg it to be around $1 billion, which can be even more in reality.
But besides the money matters, it is the trust and assurance which Ratan Tata brings along himself to the brand SnapDeal.
On one hand, Tata Group is already India’s most valuable brand and #1 in terms of brand value, and on the other hand, eCommerce segment is currently fighting the trust issue as various portals receive numerous customer issues on a daily basis. There are open letters to ecommerce CEOs and then cases where stones are delivered in place of iPod. Infact, we have revealed earlier that more than 70% of Indian eCommerce buyers feel that price is actually less important than customer service when it comes to shopping online.
The investment by Ratan Tata in Snapdeal suggests several things, and one of them is instilling trust factor into the online business. As CEO Kunal Bahl rightly shared, “An investment by a legendary and respected figure like Mr. Tata is an excellent validation of our focused strategy on building a long term enterprise and marks the start of a very important phase for the company.”
This is certainly very exciting news for the Indian eCommerce industry, a development which would be closely observed by both Flipkart and Amazon who are fighting it out with billion dollar funding to counter each other. With the introduction of the ‘Tata’ factor into this already competitive eCommerce niche, the fight even got better.
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[…] Snapdeal on the other hand has over 100,000 sellers on their platform and logistics network spanning 5000 towns and cities in India. They are currently flush with funds with $627 million investment from Softbank coming in October last year. They have so far raised nearly $1.5 Billion from clutch of investors that includes Rata Tata. […]
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[…] The fight for supremacy within Indian eCommerce world just got better as Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of $108 billion Tata Sonshas invested in India’s second biggest eCommerce portal: Snapdeal.com. […]