Ratan Tata, Tata Sons Chairman Emeritus, has invested in online marketplace Snapdeal
“Mr. Tata has made a personal investment in the company,” Snapdeal co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl said. The investment amount, however, was not disclosed.
“This stands testimony to the growth and success that we have seen in a short span of 4 years,” Mr. Bahl said.
Another report by consultancy firm PwC and industry body Assocham suggests that e-commerce firms are expected to spend up to $1.9 billion by 2017-2020 on infrastructure, logistics and warehousing.
http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/ratan-tata-invests-in-snapdealcom/article6356361.ece
India’s second largest online retailer Snapdeal is unfazed by billion dollar investments that its rivals Flipkart and Amazon are going to unleash as they fight for dominance in the fast growing e-commerce space.
“I sometimes wonder what I will (do) if I had $1 billion more, which is many times more money we have spent till now. What will we do with it? It’s not the amount of money you have in the banks, it’s how you spend it that matters,” said Snapdeal co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl. He said that right now Snapdeal has no plans to raise money as it is well capitalised. Mr Bahl said that the company had invested $100 million till now and has raised funds of over $350 million.
“Right now we are extremely well capitalised. We have three times more money in the bank than we have spent to build a $1 billion company. Right now business in its current form doesn’t need more capital,” he said.
Mr Bahl said that there are many situations in the world where companies had lots of money in banks and they didn’t know how to spend it.
“I am not saying that it is going to be the case with our market players, I have a lot of respect for them. But the market is also very large. The market is going to be $100 billion in the next 10-12 years and in that time frame I don’t think that the market cap of any one company is going to be equal to the market cap of e-commerce players in India and as a result there will be space for multiple players and multiple segments of consumers,” said Mr Bahl.
He said that Snapdeal just has to make sure it really focuses on what it has been doing and sticking to its principles of providing certainty and availability of products and services at best prices.
“This has worked for us till now really well, which is why we hit $1 billion sales in record time, the fastest growing company to hit that with the smallest amount of capital invested and smallest team. We must be doing something well and that has nothing to do with spending a bunch of money,” said Mr Bahl.
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/140827/business-latest/article/snapdeal-mocks-flipkart’s-1-billion-investment
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