Former chairman of the Tata Group Ratan Tata invests in Indian e-commerce site Snapdeal.com.
Tata Group’s Chairman emeritus Ratan Tata has invested in Indian e-commerce site Snapdeal.com in a personal capacity. The investment came a day after the Indian homegrown e-retailer partnered with Tata Value Homes, the group’s affordable housing company, to sell the latter’s apartments on its website.
Snapdeal has over 5 million products, dealing across 500 diverse categories from over 50,000 sellers. The online retailer has been witnessing a 600 per cent growth year-on-year for the last two years.
Although the amount of investment has not been disclosed, it has been reported that the stake bought by Tata was previously held by Ken Glass, former Microsoft executive.
As an online marketplace, Snapdeal has raised about $400 million since its inception and has put in approximately $100 million over logistics and operations as part of its expansion plan for the $3 billion Indian e-commerce market.
In February this year, the company received $133.7 million funding from eBay, its existing investor, among others, while in May, it raised $100 million through investments made by various firms, namely, Temasek, BlackRock Inc, Myriad, Premji Invest and Tybourne.
Indian e-commerce firms have seen massive investments coming their way over the last one year. For instance, online retailer and Snapdeal’s rival, Flipkart received $1 billion funding, which has so far been the largest in the Indian sector. Similarly, Amazon has been constantly pumping funds, amounting to $2 billion, to harden its presence in India.
E-tailing is currently a $2.3 billion market that is expected to touch $32 billion by 2020, as per consulting firm Technopak. According to reports by Indian apex trade body ASSOCHAM and consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers,over the next six years, e-commerce companies could be spending upto $109 billion on logistics, warehousing and infrastructure.
Photo Credits: The Hindu
