It’s not even a week since Flipkart made announcement of their $700 million raise from their existing investors. Now, Snapdeal, Flipkart’s closest rival, has announced half a billion funding round from Chinese eCommerce major Alibaba, OEM phone manufacturer Foxconn and Japanese investment bank SoftBank.
Last month we had reported that Alibaba & Foxconn may invest $500 million in Snapdeal, and that’s exactly what has happened.
This is Alibaba’s second major investment in India – They have previously invested around $575 million in Paytm, India’s largest mobile wallet and ecommerce company. Softbank had led the previous funding round in Snapdeal with investment of $627 million.
Here are details of 7 rounds of funding raised by Snapdeal till date:
Snapdeal Institutional Funding Till Date
| Round | Who Funded | Date | Amount |
| First Round | Nexus Venture Partners, Indo-US Venture Partners | January 2011 | USD 12 Million |
| Second Round | Bessemer Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Indo-US Venture Partners | July 2011 | USD 45 Million |
| Third Round | Ebay, Intel Capital, Nexus Venture Partners & Others | June 2013 | USD 50 Million |
| Fourth Round | Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Saama Capital | Feb 2014 | USD 133.77 Million |
| Fifth Round | Temasek Holdings, Blackrock, Myriad, Premji Invest, Tyborne | May 2014 | USD 100 Million |
| Sixth Round | Softbank | October 2014 | USD 627 Million |
| Seventh Round | Alibaba, Foxconn and Softbank | August 2015 | USD 500 Million |
| Total Fund Raise | 1,468 Million |
Snapdeal has not announced the valuation at which they have raised the funding, however, various reports suggest that it is between $5 to $10 billion. Flipkart’s valuation after their recent funding is pegged at $15 billion.
2014 was the year when Indian eCommerce started attracting huge funding rounds led by Flipkart and we are not seeing any letup in 2015 either. Infact, month of July witnessed highest number of startup funding deals compared to any previous months. Among the 98 deals that happened, about one-fourth were struck for companies who are into ecommerce space.
To counter aggressive growth from their competitors like Amazon and Flipkart – Snapdeal themselves have taken in-organic growth route. They acquired leading mobile wallet company Freecharge earlier this year. The deal was pegged in the region of $450 million through a mix of cash and equity.
