Those who thought Snapdeal is going to take it slow after shelling out a huge sum of $450 million (Rs 2,800 crore) to acquire Freecharge, here’s a news update for you. Merely 2 weeks after pulling through the biggest acquisition deal by any startup, Snapdeal has announced their plans to make 10 more investments in this fiscal year.
It looks like Snapdeal agrees with Rachna Nath, retail and consumer leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, who said, “(Acquisitions are) the only way to grow. The days of organic growth are long gone.” Why so? Because the online marketplace has reserved 60% of their budget for technology and acquisitions. They are looking to buy-out firms in mobile and data analytics field in order to build a self-sufficient ecommerce network. This to ensure they race ahead of Flipkart and Amazon.
In an interview to Economic Times, Kunal Bahl, Cofounder and Chief Executive of Snapdeal said, “We may end up making a total of 10 (acquisitions) this (financial) year, subject to something being there that is interesting.”
Kunal Bahl made it known that he is willing to spend similar to what he paid for Freecharge if right opportunities crop up. He said, “If tomorrow there is something that brings similar strategic value, would we be open to paying whatever price it is? Absolutely. But looking at the landscape in India, there aren’t that many other breakout companies. But we will assess such future opportunities on merit, and not price.”
The ecommerce firm has bought stake (partially/fully) in 10 companies in the last 5 years. It started with Grabbon in 2010, followed by Esportsbuy in 2012 and Shopo in 2013. In 2014, they acquired two firms, online product discovery technology platform – Doozton and gifting recommendation site, Wishpicker.
In 2015 they have already grabbed 5 deals.
List of acquisitions in 2015:
After announcing that the ecommerce giant doesn’t need to raise more funds, one may wonder how Snapdeal has managed recent purchases and plan to acquire more firms. Still sustaining on the $1 billion (about Rs 6,300 crore) they raised last year, Kunal Bahl had said, “We have enough capital. In fact, we have used a fraction of the amount that we have raised. We don’t have to raise money now just because it is fashionable. ” It seems Snapdeal owners do know how to use money efficiently after all.
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
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