EBay leads $134m round for Indian online marketplace Snapdeal

Snapdeal's other institutional investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Kalaari Capital, Saama Capital and Intel Capital.

"Accelerating growth in India and other emerging markets continues to be a core strategy for driving eBay's global e-commerce leadership," Jay Lee, eBay's senior vice president and Asia Pacific managing director, said in a statement. "We continue to invest in Snapdeal due to its complementary business model, good management team and strong brand."

Launched in 2010, Snapdeal received initial funding from Kalaari and Nexus, which committed $12 million in January 2011, when the company was still a deals and coupon website. The two VC firms, supported by Bessemer, returned six months later with another $40 million.

Snapdeal then pivoted to establish itself as an online marketplace, eschewing the model of sourcing goods from suppliers and then holding them as inventory until sale in favor of serving as a facilitator of transactions between suppliers and buyers. This inventory-light approach is seen as more cost-efficient.

"When we started building out our business, we had the benefit of hindsight looking at the inventory-led companies - while they were growing fast, they were growing inefficiently with respect to the capital invested," Snapdeal CEO Kunal Bahl told AVCJ last year.

The company has a registered user base of approximately 20 million, offering about 4 million products across 500 categories, including apparel, toys, footwear and electronic products. It will make $500 million in top-line in the current financial year, expects to reach $1 billion in annual gross merchandise value by 2015, and aspires to be profitable the following year.

Last year's Series C saw the entry of Saama, Intel Capital, Russian VC firm ru-Net and Japan's Recruit Holdings alongside eBay, while existing investors Bessemer, Nexus and Kalaari also participated. 

Snapdeal and eBAy have a commercial partnership whereby products are cross-promoted across their sites. If a product is not available on eBay India, customers will be directed to a Snapdeal listing of the item, and vice versa.

Snapdeal has also invested in technology to manage its logistics operations, expanded into new product categories, and launched a payment gateway. An IPO in the US is expected within the next 24 months.

The investment comes less than a month after Premji Invest led a $50 million round for Myntra Designs, a Bangalore-based online fashion retailer, and CDC Group contributed $27.5 million to a funding round for apparel-focused e-commerce platform Jabong which could be worth $100 million in total.

Flipkart, India's leading online retailer, has received the most PE and VC backing among the e-commerce players. The company completed a two-phase Series E round in October 2013, raising $360 million in total.

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• Topics
• Venture
• Consumer
• Technology
• South Asia
• TMT
• Consumer
• India
• Venture
• Nexus India Capital Advisors
• Bessemer Venture Partners
• Intel Capital
• Saama Capital