Japanese telecom major SoftBank has agreed to buy a $627 million (Rs 3,825 crore at $1 = Rs 61) stake in online retailer Snapdeal, seeking to tap into India's growing e-commerce market. This would be the biggest investment by a single investor in the e-commerce sector in India. (Read full story)
Snapdeal, founded by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal four years ago, has raised about $1 billion (Rs 6,100 crore) this year. Co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl, an engineer from University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Wharton School, spoke to NDTV about the SoftBank deal and its future plans. (Watch)
Highlights:
- The capital from SoftBank would be invested into its technology platform to make it easier for entrepreneurs to sell online
- We aim to build a platform that makes it very easy for anyone intending to be an entrepreneur to sell within one hour
- Our goal is to create life-changing experiences for 1 million small businesses in India over the next three years
- Currently, over 50,000 small businesses selling on our platform
- The SoftBank investment is a validation of our focus with which we worked over the past few years
- The SoftBank investment done at a premium as compared to the previous round
- SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son may have seen in Snapdeal what he had seen in Alibaba 15 years ago (SoftBank has a significant stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba)
- Notion that e-commerce businesses don't make money is wrong
- Tremendous headroom to grow in the business
- Our business is similar to Alibaba's
- Over the next 7-8 years Indian e-commerce sector to touch $100 billion, from current level of $5-6 billion
- Feel as paranoid about our business as the time when we first started from the basement of a furniture market in Delhi
- Customers can email me directly at kunal.bahl@snapdeal.com if they have any problems
- Challenges in this business like any other business are many and changing
- This year's growth in e-commerce was not foreseen by anyone, including us
- The growth has been exponential
- 30 per cent of all the sellers on Snapdeal are first-time women entrepreneurs
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