India’s Snapdeal acquires e-retailer Shopo
Sequoia Capital-backed Shopo.in, an online marketplace for Indian handicraft products, has been bought by Snapdeal.com promoter Jasper Infotech for an undisclosed amount. Shopo had raised funding from Sequoia, SRI Capital and Seeders Venture Capital in 2011.
Snapdeal.com's CEO Kunal Bahl said: "The Indian designer and handicrafts market is large but highly fragmented and the demand for such products is tremendous. With this acquisition, we will now provide these unique products at great prices to Snapdeal's 20 million members, and warmly welcome Shopo's sellers to leverage Snapdeal's nationwide reach."
In April last year Snapdeal acquired esportsbuy.com. It had also bought group buying site Grabbon in 2010.
The Shopo acquisition is the latest in a number of merger and acquisition deals in the Indian online retail segment. In February, SAIF Partners-backed fashion retailer Zovi acquired local rival Inkfruit, which was also funded by SAIF.
Hoopos merged into Babyoye with funding from Tiger Global, Accel Partners and Helion Ventures.
Flipkart purchased rival e-commerce platform Letsbuy.com for an estimated $25 million. Both were backed by Tiger Global Management and Accel Partners, but Letsbuy was unable to attract any more investment from its existing backers.
Snapdeal has raised a total of $102 million in funding. The latest round is reported to include e-commerce giant eBay. Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners committed $12 million to the company in January 2011, data from AVCJ Research show.
A second round came six months later, the two VC firms returning with another $40 million in capital, this time supported by Bessemer Venture partners.
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