Anand Piramal Bets On Snapdeal
Piramal Enterprises’ Executive Director Anand Piramal has invested in Snapdeal in his personal capacity.
Snapdeal has raised an undisclosed amount in fresh funding from Anand Piramal, the executive director of the Piramal Group.
Piramal invested the capital in his personal capacity, the e-commerce firm said in a statement on Tuesday, without disclosing the amount.
The Softbank-backed e-commerce firm said the turnaround strategy—dubbed Snapdeal 2.0 by its Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Kunal Bahl—has allowed it to rapidly scale and build a differentiated business as it moved towards seller-branded products, with about 80 percent of business now coming from small towns and cities.
“Snapdeal’s sharp execution in bringing great selection to the mass market segment in tier 2-3 cities has been quite successful, leveraging the growing Internet penetration in these geographies,” Piramal said in a statement.
The Snapdeal funding comes nearly two years after a merger with its bigger rival Flipkart had failed.
Bahl said Piramal’s investment comes as a significant endorsement for Snapdeal and the transformation the company has undergone over the last couple of years.
The online retailer brought down its losses by 70 percent year-on-year to Rs 186 crore in the year ended March 2019, Bahl said in a blogpost last week. The company’s consolidated revenue rose twofold to Rs 925 crore in the same period, with revenue from operations comprising of Rs 813 crore.
Snapdeal said its product selection has grown to over 200 million, and in the last two years, it has seen over 60,000 new sellers coming on board, adding over 50 million new listings on the platform.