Inside Snapdeal, the Dil ki Deal.
Snapdeal is an online marketplace for mobiles, clothes, consumer electronics and other accessories. Snapdeal was founded in 2007. It has raised $1.5B in 9 rounds. The latest round was in 2015. Some of Snapdeal’s investors include Alibaba Group, Foxconn and SoftBank Corp. Some of Snapdeal’s latest acquisitions include Reduce Data, Inc., LetsGoMo, etc
The Journey
In 2010, an offline couponing business named MoneySaver was established by two young budding entrepreneurs Kunal Bahl & Rohit Bansal. It was inspired by groupon.com and MoneySaver went on to sell a whopping 15,000 coupons over a span of just 90 days! The twist in the plot came in November 2011 when the founders were inspired by the success of Alibaba.com and decided to create an online marketplace on the similar lines. Kunal and Rohit decided to shut down the coupon business and a result of this Snapdeal was born. With the core value – Innovation, Change, Openness, Honesty and Ownership the company has gone to become a $4.8 Billion as of today.
Funding
Snapdeal has raised about $1.5 billion so far from 34 investors altogether.
| Date | Funding | Investors |
| January 2011 | $12 million | Indo-US Venture Partners and Nexus Venture Partners. |
| July 2011 | $45 million | Bessemer Venture Partners along with existing investors. |
| April 2013 | $50 million | eBay along with existing investors. |
| August 2013 | $75 million | Softbank Capital. |
| February 2014 | $133 million | eBay along with Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Saama Capital. |
| May 2014 | $105 million | Blackrock, Temasek Holdings, Premji Invest and others. |
| August 2014 | undisclosed | Ratan Tata. |
| October 2014 | $647 million | SoftBank. |
| August 2015 | $500 million | Alibaba, Foxconn Technology Group and SoftBank. |
Acquisition
| Date | Amount | Company | Details of the Company |
| June 2011 | Undisclosed | Grabbon.com | group buying site |
| April 2012 | Undisclosed | esportsbuy.com | an online sports goods retailer |
| May 2013 | Undisclosed | Shopo.in | online marketplace for Indian handicraft products |
| April 2014 | Undisclosed | Doozton.com | fashion products discovery site |
| December 2014 | Undisclosed | Wishpicker.com | gifting recommendation site |
| January 2015 | Undisclosed | Smartprix.com (Stake) | product comparison website |
| February 2015 | Undisclosed | Exclusively.in | luxury fashion products discovery site |
| March 2015 | Undisclosed | Gojavas.com (20% stake) | time-bound logistics and supply chain service provider |
| March 2015 | Undisclosed | Unicommerce.com | ecommerce management software and fulfilment solution provider |
| March 2015 | Undisclosed | Rupee Power | financial services marketplace |
| April 2015 | Undisclosed | FreeCharge.com | mobile-payments company |
| September 2015 | Undisclosed | Reduce Data | a programmatic display advertising platform |
Marketing Strategy
- Get your first deal free – Got a huge response from the customers.
- Referral Program – The Company paid a fixed amount to its user when they got a friend to sign up.
- Affiliate marketing – The Company paid started paying ₹30 on every lead generated to the affiliates however, it did not yield the desired results as it was found that the competitors were paying a better amount then Snapdeal. However, Snapdeal was quick with it response and increased the price by to ₹50-100 on per lead generated.
- Aggressive Email Campaign – Snapdeal has been doing quite an aggressive campaign to convert the leads into potential sales.
- Social Media – Snapdeal has tremendous followers on Flipkart & Twitter with a high level of engagement. The Twitter account has seen a 21,300 followers while the Facebook page has over 3,674,243 fans. The responses to the queries and complaints stand to max 5 mins from the time of post.
- Trolling Flipkart – Snapdeal has been taking its competitors head-on be it 2014 when Flipkart had its Big Billion Day Sale or in June 2015 when Flipkart had launched #achhakiya campaign.
- TV Commercials – Snapdeal has successfully utilized the television platform to drive in organic traffic. Many well-known Bollywood celebs like Pulkit Samrat, Alok Nath and Krishna Abhishek have endorsed the branding the past. Recently Snapdeal has hired Aamir Khan for the “Dil Ki Deal” campaign and it was been winning hearts of millions.
- TV-Shop – Snapdeal has its own TV channel, TV-Shop. The channel keeps running product offers 24*7, where the users can order products through a phone call, this is something very similar to tele brands ads but own an exclusive TV channel.
Future Plans
With Snapdeal sharing the second largest market share at 22% in India (Flipkart leading the market share by 44% and Amazon at 14%), Snapdeal plans to increase its market share and has also started gearing up for an IPO (Initial Public Offering). The IPO is expected in 2016-2017, this will help Snapdeal raise more capital for themselves & existing Investors.
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