In a major development in the highly competitive Indian e-commerce space, news agency Reuters reports that the much talked about Snapdeal-Flipkart merger deal is finally to go through after months of talks between the two majors.
According to the report, the Jasper Infotech board, which runs Snapdeal, has approved the bid of $900-950 million by Flipkart. However, the deal needs approval from smaller shareholders of Snapdeal before it is finalised.
CNBC-TV18 also reported the same development citing sources.
The report said that the deal would take part in three steps.
“SoftBank will first buyout stake from Snapdeal and its investors — Nexus and Kalaari Capital. The capital will then be put into Flipkart by SoftBank. In the last stage, Flipkart will merge with Snapdeal,” the CNBC-TV18 report states.
The report further states that Softbank will own a 20% stake in the Flipkart-Snapdeal combine.
According to the report, the deal would not include Snapdeal subsidiaries like Vulcan Express, Freecharge, and Unicommeerce.
Meanwhile, there are reports that Axis Bank will buy the payments platform Freecharge.
The Mint reports that Snapdeal and Flipkart will negotiate on the sale and purchase agreement starting from Monday.
This development comes after it was reported that the founders of Snapdeal— Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal were keen to sell the company to Infibeam, which is the only listed e-commerce entity in the country.
The founders also suggested that if the deal does not fall through, they would rather continue with Snapdeal being an independent entity and downsize their business for survivability.