After weeks of negotiation between SoftBank and Nexus Venture Partners to sell Snapdeal to rival Flipkart, the much-needed nod from Nexus has come, and it’s a deal!
As per an Economic Times report, Snapdeal’s largest shareholder SoftBank has secured a go-ahead from Nexus, who had issues over valuations suggested by SoftBank. Several board meetings were held over the past few weeks to resolve this issue.
Sources told ET that the term sheet with Flipkart is likely to be signed this week and the due diligence for the deal will commence thereafter.
Snapdeal founders will be getting about $25 million each, while Nexus could get close to $100 million and even a stake in the new merged entity. Snapdeal’s other largest investor Kalaari could get about $70-80 million.
In the last funding round back in February 2016, Snapdeal was valued at $6.5 billion, which shrunk in the past year and this deal, once it goes through, could see Snapdeal being valued at about $1 billion, ET reports.
In the recent annual report put out by Japanese investor SoftBank, it said to have suffered a loss of around $1.4 billion on its investment in Snapdeal and Ola, with Snapdeal getting a special mention. It wrote down its valuation by nearly a million dollars.
SoftBank is Snapdeal’s largest investor, owning over 30%, with Nexus holding about 10% and Kalaari holds 8%.
Once completed, this deal will be the largest ecommerce acquisition in India and give Flipkart much more power over rival Amazon, thus changing the landscape in this space significantly.
Beleaguered Snapdeal has been struggling with a cash crunch and has also put Freecharge, its digital wallet arm, on the block for sale. Reports suggest, Paytm and MobiKwik are looking to buy FreeCharge. It is also looking to either divest majority stake or completely sell of its in-house logistics arm Vulcan Express as well