Homegrown ecommerce major Flipkart, on Monday, sent a revised buyout offer to rival online retailer Snapdeal of around $850 million.
According to multiple sources familiar with the development, the move comes at a time when Snapdeal resisted the earlier acquisition offer and demanded a $900 million payout.
Sources revealed that Flipkart has agreed to pay $650 million to $700 million in stock as soon as the merger is finalised. The remaining $150 million will be transferred at a later date.
As part of the deal, the Jasper Infotech-owned Snapdeal and its ecommerce management firm Unicommerce are a part of the offer. But the company’s digital wallet FreeCharge and logistics arm Vulcan Express are not included in the deal.
Snapdeal board, which earlier rejected the takeover offer of $800 million to $850 million, will have to negotiate a sale and purchase agreement soon and the deal will close after few more weeks.
Flipkart and Snapdeal merger, already in the air since at least April, comes at a time when Indian ecommerce industry is facing stronger competition from US giant Amazon.
Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal founded Snapdeal has raised nearly $2 billion in cash and hit a peak valuation of $6.5 billion in February 2016 when it received $50 million from investors.
The company’s fortune started tottering after that and senior and middle managers left the organisation. The company also had to face dysfunctional board as the financial interests of investors clashed.
SoftBank Group, the company’s largest shareholder, initiated talks to sell the company in March. This really raised the eyebrows of both founders and few investors. Industry observers say the merger is engineered by Tiger Global and SoftBank to save their financial prospects.
Snapdeal has more than 25 institutional shareholders as well as dozens of individual part-owners. SoftBank has already written off over $1 billion on the valuation of its investment in Snapdeal.
Speculation is rife that, another suitor Infibeam is in the race to acquire Snapdeal, even though the Ahmedabad- based company has termed it “purely speculative”.
Published 18 July 2017, 18:07 IST