Indian e-commerce giant Snapdeal is in talks with Alibaba to raise $1 billion fresh funds. Snapdeal’s top executives including Kunal Bahal were in china last week for negotiations. With this deal, Snapdeal is aiming to reach $5 billion.
“Snapdeal has a term sheet from Alibaba, but is not getting the valuation (it) wants,” said one of the sources, referring to the document that indicates an investor’s initial interest. “On the other hand, private equity firms are making higher offers, so i can likely be a joint investment,” said one of the sources quoted earlier.
Snapdeal raised $650 million from Softbank last year valuing it at $1.8 billion. This helped company in competing with Flipkart and Amazon. Softbank was itself the early backer of Alibaba.
Alibaba is interested but deal is still pending. Alibaba has yet to confirm the term sheet.
Alibaba has been eyeing investments in Indian startups for past few months. Last year, it also invested in Paytm and acquired 25% stake.
Source: Economics Times
