Tracking Snapdeal’s Moves this Quarter

Snapdeal, one of the prominent marketplaces in the country, has had a busy quarter. The company which was into daily deals initially has pivoted quickly to become a rather strong contender in the online marketplace segment. Let us see what they have been upto in the last 3 months.

Raised additional funding:

To start with, they raised funding to the tune of Rs. 280 crore from various international and national investors. Overall, this means that Snapdeal is a very well funded company which is going to focus on growth. This can only mean good news to online sellers since they will be seeing new features and capabilities on the marketplace.

Launches Trustpay:

The next thing Snapdeal did was launch their new escrow like service called TrustPay which essentially guarantees 100% cashback to the customer in case they don’t receive and confirm the product, as many of you must already know. Even though this is a good thing for customers, sellers can sometimes suffer the brunt of a customer’s whims and fancies. We believe that there should be balanced system where both the communities have an equal balance in terms of payments.

Launches Safeship:

Snapdeal announced SafeShip in June. This is a shipping system and solution for sellers to handle logistics and delivery of their products. One key thing is that seller can take advantage of Snapdeal’s delivery network across the country to reach out to even larger amount of people than they could previously by managing delivery logistics on their own. However, the only hiccup would be if Snapdeal’s delivery partners are not up to the mark.

Partnership with Vijay Sales:

The most recent of Snapdeal’s announcements this quarter was the strategic partnership with Vijay Sales.  Snapdeal will be selling Vijay Sales’ products on its website and they are expecting monthly sales to the tune of Rs.20-30 crore from this tie-up. This will not have significant impact on online sellers as such, but sellers who deal in consumer electronics need to take note and study the price competition.

How many of you have done business with Snapdeal? How has your experience with the company been, especially with TrustPay and Safeship? Do let us know in the comments.