Snapdeal has emerged as the biggest online Indian market that sells about ten million products across many categories that include kitchen and home appliances, fashion apparels and accessories, electronic devices and various other lifestyle products. Alibaba Group, eBay, Ratan Tata etc. are some of the investors of the Company.
- Industry: Internet
- Founded: 2010
- Founder(s): Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal
- Headquarters: New Delhi, India
- Subsidiaries: FreeCharge
- Website: snapdeal.com
History of SnapDeal
Snapdeal was founded on the 4th of February 2010 by the Wharton graduate Kunal Bahl, who had double degrees in Business Program and M&T Engineering at Penn. He founded the Company along with the IIT Delhi alumnus Rohit Bansal. Initially it was a small portal selling daily items but later transformed into a huge online store selling millions of products in a host of categories, such as home decor and appliances, clothing, books, electronic gadgets etc.
Some of the investors of the Company are IndoUS Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Kalaari Capital, Foxconn Technology Group, Saama Capital etc.
In the month of June 2014, Snapdeal announced that it had 1000 traders on its portal and its sales crossed over one crore rupees. Legendary actor Amir Khan took part in promoting the website in the month of March 2015.
More about SnapDeal
Snapdeal has more than 20,000,000 subscribers and receives up to 10,000,000 users every day and about 17 million users every month.
The Company has many acquisitions. For instance, it has acquired Grabbon.com, which is a Bengaluru-based buying site on the 2nd of June 2011. It acquired the sports goods online retailer esportsbuy.com in April 2012. Shopo.in is another acquisition of Snapdeal. It acquired this online market site selling Indian handcraft items in the month of May 2013.Doozton.com is a fashion products site that has also been acquired by Snap deal in the month of April 2014. Some of its other acquisitions are options, Wishpicker.com, a site for gift options; Smartprix.com, a site for comparing products and Exclusively.in, a plush fashion apparel site.In the month of March 2015, it acquired Unicommerce.com, which is an e-commerce software management and the fulfilment solution.
It acquired 20% stake of Gojavas.com, the logistics Service Company and majority stakes in ‘RupeePower.’ ‘Pigeon Express,’ the logistics firm acquired a stake of 51% of the GoJavas Company along with a 49% stake held by Snapdeal in that firm.
There were rumours about Snapdeal that it would merge with its bigger competitors such as Amazon and Flipkart in August 2016 but Snapdeal has denied these claims. There is a possibility that Flipkart might acquire Snapdeal but the Company has to look into the ‘Foreign Exchange’ rules of the ‘Reserve Bank of India’ for protecting Snapdeal’s shareholder’s interests.
Factors Contributing to the Success of Snapdeal:
- Snapdeal has the service oriented architecture.
- The Company aligns the priorities of the business in a very effective way.
- The engineers of the Company are the recruiters.
- Employees have the freedom of embracing a technology that can prove to be beneficial for the Company.
