Ahead of sale to Flipkart, founders and NVP invest Rs 113 cr in Snapdeal

E-commerce firm Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal and existing investor Nexus Venture Partners have together infused Rs 113 crore into the company ahead of its potential sale to larger rival Flipkart.

Both Bansal and Bahl have invested Rs 8.45 crore each, while Nexus Venture Partners has invested Rs 96.2 crore into Snapdeal, company said in its filings with the Registrar of Companies on Monday.

It isn't clear why the investment was made or what it could mean, but was approved at an Extraordinary General Meeting of the company held on March 10. The founders, along with Nexus, were offered 17,410 Series J1 preference shares for their investments, said the disclosure which comes at a time when Flipkart has begun doing due diligence to acquire the firm.

Softbank, the largest investor in Snapdeal, has pushed for the company's sale to Flipkart for which the latter signed a term sheet last week. The Japanese investor had written off a $1 billion in losses from Snapdeal for the year that ended March 2017.

Flipkart has now taken the position of the sole Indian firm that can rival Amazon and Alibaba in India. The company recently raised $1.4 billion from Tencent, eBay and Microsoft, with Softbank having shown interest to invest further into the Flipkart-Snapdeal merged entity.

Sources close to the development say that Softbank could partially buyout Tiger Global's share in Flipkart with close to $1 billion that would help the US fund recover the principal amount it invested. Softbank could choose. Read More