 "Furniture, fashion or tablets? SoftBank considers investing in startups Urban Ladder, Yepme and Swipe")
The early investment in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has paid off for Japan’s SoftBank Corp, which has reportedly made a windfall gain of $5 billion from the listing of Alibaba where it holds stake worth more than $70 billion.
India now seems to be its next big internet bet. It has not only invested more than $800 million in two Indian startups - Taxi-hailing service Ola Cabs and e-commerce portal Snapdeal- but has also pledged to invest $10 billion in India in the coming years.
“When I first invested in Alibaba more than a decade ago, many questioned my move,” Son had said in an interview with _CNBC-TV18. “_Now I say Snapdeal will be India’s Alibaba.”
In its third acquisition in India in just one month, earlier this week, Bharti SoftBank, a joint venture between India’s Bharti Enterprises and Japan’s SoftBank, bought a 36.5 per cent stake in Indian startup ScoopWhoop, which operates Web-based entertainment and news. And its appetite is just getting bigger.
According to a report in the Economic Times, SoftBank has invited three Indian startups- online furniture retailer Urban Ladder, fashion portal Yepme and low-cost tablet maker Swipe- to Japan later this month to continue negotiations that could lead to a round of funding.
During their vist to India last month, SoftBank chairman Masayoshi Son and vice chairman Nikesh Arora met a number of entrepreneurs from technology, e-commerce and telecom sectors.
Clearly,SoftBank has ample resources to deploy for acquisitions after the Blockbuster Alibaba listing. This month it also invested $250 million in Legendary Entertainment, the Hollywood firm that produced the latest Godzilla movie.
Son’s global ambitions were in full public view last year when SoftBank bought No. 3 US mobile carrier Sprint Corp for $21.6 billion.
The Snapdeal purchase comes as international investors hunt deals in online retail in India, which has the world’s third-largest Internet user base but e-commerce is still relatively underdeveloped.
Fifty-seven-year-old Son is Japan’s richest man with an estimated net worth of $20 billion post-Alibaba’s IPO, having surpassed Tadashi Yanai, chairman of Fast Retailing which runs Uniqlo.
SoftBank didn’t disclose how big a stake it will have in Snapdeal, which will use funds to expand operations to compete with bigger, free-spending rivals Flipkart.com and Amazon.com.
The company did say it will become the biggest investor in Snapdeal, where sales of everything from clothes to computers have brought in around 25 million registered users and 50,000-plus merchants, attracting international shareholders like e-commerce operator eBay Inc and investment firm BlackRock Inc.
“SoftBank is a major investor in the internet space and them putting in a large sum of money validates the growth of Indian e-commerce,” said Niren Shah, managing director at venture capital firm Norwest Venture Partners.
With inputs from Reuters
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