Stopped investor meetings, yet to even use SoftBank funds: Snapdeal

Snapdeal’s co-founder Kunal Bahl has a huge soft corner for Alibaba. In an interaction with journalists this afternoon to announce a foray into financial services, Bahl mentioned the Alibaba model multiple times. Once he admitted that Snapdeal has taken “deep” inspiration from the Chinese e-commerce giant, which has also been offering liquidity solutions to its customers. Another time, he referred to Alibaba while explaining how the growth of e-commerce in China via Alibaba was through creation of multiple platforms unlike in the US market where a single, monolithic platform has evolved. So is Bahl meeting his inspiration, Alibaba founder Jack Ma who happens to be in India as we speak? Bahl replied with a shy smile “why don’t you ask him?” Ma met Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday where he is said to have discussed ways to empower small businesses in India. So then what about multiple reports in recent weeks about talks between Snapdeal and Alibaba for fund raising? Some of these reports later said talks between the two companies have fallen through on valuation issues. Bahl did not comment on this. [caption id=“attachment_2116071” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Snapdeal co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl. Image courtesy Snapdeal[/caption] But his reply to another question is quite telling; Bahl repeated what he has been saying often enough: that Snapdeal is well funded, is not on the lookout for fresh funding and compared to other e-commerce companies, Snapdeal is more efficient in employing its capital. He emphasised that Snapdeal is well funded for the next “couple of years” before throwing a bomb shell: “We have not even touched the SoftBank money till now….we don’t have to raise capital because its fashionable….we have stopped taking investor meetings for now”. Snapdeal raised $627 million from Japan’s SoftBank in October last year. So is Alibaba’s fascination limited to replicating the Chinese giant’s business model, without actually partnering it? Much like Alibaba, Snapdeal today announced a venture to increase liquidity for its customers. It has acquired a majority stake in Rupeepower.com for an undisclosed amount. Rupeepower.com matches loan borrowers to financial institutions, has been around for four years and has a small team of just 40 people. It claims to have helped disburse Rs 1500 crore worth of loans in 2014-15. Tejasvi Mohanram of Rupeepower.com said the website has a tie-up with 12 banks including state owned SBI. Bahl said the target is to help disburse loans worth Rs 6,000 crore in the next two years after the stake acquisition. And that the idea of buying a majority stake in this venture came after he realised that consumers need easy access to funds. “We have vast amounts of user purchase data at Snapdeal. This, along with a study of consumer buying behaviour already provides with a credit worthiness parameter of Snapdeal customers. Snapdeal has 40 million registered users and this number is growing rapidly,” he said. Snapdeal’s foray into financial services follows many similar initiatives in recent weeks - such as acquisition of a small stake in logistics firm Go Javas for an undisclosed amount to take care of last mile deliveries and the acquisition of luxury portal Exclusively.in earlier to foray into the luxury goods space.