Amid merger talks, Snapdeal gets Rs 113 crore as emergency funding from founders and Nexus

Beleaguered ecommerce firm Snapdeal has raised Rs 113 crore in an emergency funding round from its second largest investor Nexus Venture Partners and Snapdeal’s founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, as per a Mint report.

This infusion of funds comes at a time when the final contours of Snapdeal’s sale to Flipkart is being finalized after the boardroom battled it out to reach a consensus over the deal.

Mint reports that Nexus, has invested Rs 96.26 crore in the latest round, according to documents with the Registrar of Companies (RoC). Snapdeal CEO Bahl and COO Bansal contributed Rs 8.45 crore each, the documents show.

Mint had reported on April 28 that Snapdeal had, at that point, cash reserves left for less than four months.

Snapdeal’s largest investor SoftBank had been orchestrating a sale between Snapdeal and Flipkart after it took a hit of nearly a billion dollars on its investment in Snapdeal and Ola.  

According to an ET report, once the sales goes through, Nexus, which has invested $43 million-$45 million in Snapdeal for about a 10% stake, could receive about $60 million in lieu of its holding in the company. Its third largest investor Kalaari Capital could receive around $30 million for the 8% it holds in Snapdeal. However, there is not clarity whether this amount will be entirely in cash or have a stock component to it.

Snapdeal was valued at $6.5 billion when it last raised funds back in February 2016. It has since then shrunk in the past year and this deal, once it goes through, could see Snapdeal being valued at about $1 billion, ET reports.

Apart from SoftBank, Nexus and Kalaari, Snapdeal has over 20 stakeholders on its cap table, including PremjiInvest, the personal investment arm of Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, eBay, Foxconn Technology Group, Alibaba Group, the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock, Tata Sons Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata, and hedge funds Tybourne Capital and Myriad Asset Management.